


Or Alternatively

by 99BottlesOfBeerOnTheWall



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (From Veth’s canon backstory), Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Autistic Caleb Widogast, Caleb Widogast Needs a Hug, Caleb Widogast-centric, Feeblemind Spell, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, Neurodivergent Caleb Widogast, POV Alternating, Past Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Self-Harm, Starvation, don’t worry she ain’t actually dead, it starts dark but gets better, slightly altered backstories, with a lil bit of whump to make Liam proud
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 42,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27727284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/99BottlesOfBeerOnTheWall/pseuds/99BottlesOfBeerOnTheWall
Summary: Veth squeezed his hand gently and patted the back. “I’ve gotta pay bail first. Then we can get you out.” She whispered, forlorn, and placed a dry peck of the lips on his knuckles.The boy still didn’t answer her. His fear was still a mask over his face, and Veth looked at it with a frown.“I won’t hurt you, my boy.” She whispered. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”I wanted an alternate backstory where Veth meets a Feebleminded Bren and takes him in. And since they say”God helps those who help themselves”, I just went ahead and started making it myself. Enjoy.
Relationships: Nott | Veth Brenatto & Caleb Widogast, Yeza Brenatto/Nott | Veth Brenatto
Comments: 469
Kudos: 459





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was greatly inspired by the other feeblemind fics on this website, primarily Vernichten by ElphieBLW but I wanted to stick with the POV of a mentally hindered character for a little longer than most of them, and really dive into the mindset. So this happened.

Forgot was hungry.

He could feel it inside his middle. A tight, angry pain, twisting him up with empty. Like being squeezed. The hurt was known, it went with him everywhere, but he still didn’t like it. Empty-middle was important. He knew that. Soreness where he swallowed was important too, in a different way. It meant he needed colorless-drink before his tongue swelled up and his seeing got blurry and pain. But the empty-middle was harder to take care of. Colorless-drink was easily found, while good-eat was difficult.

Good-eating was hard to find, because while Forgot had tried many eats, most of them came back out. They made his middle hurt, and his whole self dizzy sick-feeling before everything he’d swallowed came back up, tasting bad and burning until he spit it out and cried. He’d learned. There were lots of eats he could swallow, but not many that stayed swallowed.

Forgot didn’t know much things. But he knew all things had goods, and bads. The things he swallowed to fill his empty-middle were either good or bad. Overhead was either good or bad. (Bright-blue was good, and made him see, while cold-black-dark was the dangerous time of hiding). There were good and bad places too. There was a Bad-Direction that he knew the location of no matter where he looked, and all the other ways were good because they weren’t that, so he always put the Bad-Direction behind him so he wouldn’t accidentally go that way.

People were good or bad too. He’d run away from bad peoples, but they weren’t the only ones. Bad people always looked like the good ones, but they didn’t act the same at all. The bad people were always coming too close, and touching, looked like nice-with-no-dirt. And they hurt him. Bad peoples always hurt him.

Forgot was bad too.

He was very bad, and not-nice, and did-something-wrong. Leftover feelings told him that. He couldn’t remember what he’d done, exactly. Not unless he tried very hard, and then it was bright, hot-red, screaming-sorry, take-them-out, Master’s voice, stop it-stop it- _stop it_ —

It only took moments for memory-images to hurt too much, and make him cry. When that happened he scratched himself until that pain made the bigger pain go away again. His past wrong was very big, and very very bad, and he’d learned never to look at it.

So he spent his days looking for good-eats instead. That was right. Was good. Was a thing that kept him busy, and moving away from the Bad-Direction at his back. Forgot didn’t have room for more than one thing in his think, or he would get mixed up. As long as he filled himself with looking for eats, there wasn’t space for anything else, and he carefully kept himself that way.

It would get painful if he tried to puzzle about it: the not-room in his Him. Somehow it shouldn’t be that way. The not-enough-think was another thing about himself that he was pretty sure was bad. Not right, and should be different. Somehow it was all part of the...the...

The Forgot.

That wasn’t his Called, his I-Am. He was supposed to have something else, but instead he just had the blank of Forgot. Just a hole. An empty space, that ached in his think, just like the emptiness ached in his middle. Some sort of squeezing hunger. A burning memory that said “I know I knew this,” and made him hurt like the memory-images hurt, and that he made no room to think for.

Forgot had an awful lot of things to keep out of his think.

And so he was up on two walks, and searching out good-eating. He’d been smelling one close by, and something more than his empty-middle wanted it. Part of him was hungry, but another deeper part of him knew the smell he was following. It was hot, and cooked, and fresh-baked-home. The hollow blank of his before-forgetting was screaming for it, and so Forgot tottered up to track it down, and swallow the source.

He didn’t like being straight. It made him feel exposed, and unbalanced, to be up so far from the dirt. Crawling was safer, and made him harder to see. But all the peoples would catch him immediately with the crawling that was so unlike them. And he didn’t want to be caught. He wanted the baked-eat, with a ravenous craving that made him bolder, and (to the best of his ability) cunning. If he was like the people, he could go where they were, and get what they had.

And he really, really wanted that baked-eat.

Shuffling carefully he crept out of the greens, and went toward the people’s place. There were lots big square shelter-homes, and they made him feel small when he got close to them, all straight and clean how he didn’t like things to be. This was a foreign place, a danger-to-be-found place, where he shouldn’t ever go. But that smell was still calling. None of the peoples seemed to be watching him though. So he dared to keep moving inward.

Further in there were even more peoples. They were everywhere, some just moving about like he was, some sitting under big shades with lots of things spread out around them for other peoples to look at. Song-sounds were coming from somewhere too, and it seemed to make the peoples happy with teeth showing smiles. Forgot stumbled in and out among them, blinking and confused with all the noise and bustle, and still forlornly seeking that important smell he wanted.

He found it under one of the big shades, where a person was. For a moment Forgot just watched, until the person was busy making sounds with another short, plump little female with ruddy brown skin. Only when they were fully distracted did Forgot dare to come closer. There were rows and rows of brown good-smelling-things, that some part of him remembered from before-forgetting, and knew would be crunchy outside, soft underneath, and very good eating.

The person was still busy, and Forgot carefully reached out to take one of the good-eats, with a surge of insatiable curiosity. The crunchy-outside under his hands was warm, and crackled softly when he squeezed, making his empty-middle grumble sharply. Exploring the object, he pressed down until his touching broke through the brittle-outside, and he saw the fluffy-white underneath. A hot wave of baked home-smell rolled over him too, and he shuddered with a needy calling from the empty place in his think, suddenly full of want and remembering.

Pushing farther, he dug into the soft spongey center, until he had pushed his whole hand into the middle and could feel the warmth of baking-heat around him like a balm. For that one moment everything was right, and good, and comfort, while he pushed his nose into the crusty outer-shell and breathed it. He forgot about being empty, and about being scared, and about being Forgot. It vanished, along with everything else, while the Home-Smell made everything safe again.

Then it was all shattered by pain.

“Here now!” An angry speaking roared, and the strike of a long, hard stick cracked against Forgot’s body.

A yelp of hurt escaped as he was jolted back to himself, and recognition of the person he’d forgotten about. The man’s face was an angry, blotchy red; screaming danger and promise-of-hurt, and he tried to hit Forgot with the stick again. Forgot cringed away with a whimper, and the person started shouting at other peoples.

Someone grabbed Forgot, halting his escape, and Forgot fought back with a distressed sob. By jerking his reach up he hit the person in the face, and managed to wriggle free again, now intent on flight. For a few moments there was only desperate movement, fear, and the important home-thing still held safe against his body. Then another stick hit him in the middle, and he found himself tripped forward in the dirt. Another bruising strike cracked against his back, pulling a broken animal sob from his speaking, before a shiny metal boot kicked him around to face the open-overhead and peoples gawking down at him.

A metal clad person stooped down over him, reaching to confiscate the baked home-thing, and Forgot writhed away from him with a whimper. He was bad. Shiny. Clean. One of the bad-people. One of Master’s-people. 

Without taking pity the shiny person wrenched away the home-eat, and dropped it on the ground. For a moment longer rebellion prevailed and Forgot’s arm shot out to grab his prize back. Another harsh blow from the stick cracked across his face when he did, which made sparkling white explode across his seeing, and he found himself sobbing into the dirt with hot-runny-copper filling his taste and dribbling on the ground.

Metallic hands flipped him over front-down again. They were pulling his limbs back so that Master’s metal-things closed around his wrists, and Forgot screamed because he couldn’t say anything else, trying desperately to escape. Bad. Bad. The metal-things always came first, and then the pain. The punishment and burning-torture-glass.

His struggle wasn’t tolerated. Before Forgot could do more than flounder against the grapple a little, one blunt end of the hitting-sticks struck against his head again, and this time it sent him toppling into sick body-darkness.

***

“Stop him! Somebody grab him! He’s stealing my bread!” Ozzy screeched, trying to get his fat body out of the market stall into the open street.

One beefy hand pushed her shoulder away, and Veth just barely managed to keep a hold of her shopping basket with a yelp. For a moment chaos reigned as Ozzy toddled out into the street waving his arms, several people jumped to try and grab the muddy vagabond, and Veth was pushed around by more people. She reached the scene about the same time the Crownsguard did, and pushed to the front just in time to see one of them strike across the beggar’s face, and the way he spat up blood made her wince.

Everyone was crowding for room to see what was happening, and Veth got pushed back about the same time the screaming started, and then she jostled into view again right when the guard silenced it with another jab from the butt of his spear. The beggar went limp like a de-stringed puppet, head lolling back like a doll as the guards none too gently lifted him, and he was thrown over one shoulder like a sack of flour. Veth just barely managed to dodge out of the way as the guards marched past her, and for that one instant her face and the beggar’s were on the same level, as she watched his bruised and bloody visage get carried past. Then he was gone, and Veth was standing cold in the middle of the street as the crowd around her dissipated.

“—tried to steal one of my loaves, look you! What I slaved my back and heart over, not but this morning!” Ozzy’s voice shouted in blustering tones behind her.

“Eh, ya’ don’t say? In this day and age...” a rustic feminine voice answered.

Veth blinked to herself, and realized the beggar’s mangled loaf was still sitting forgotten in the street. A passing shopper scuffed it with his boot, grinding dust into the bread. There was a dog at the man’s heel, a big leggy hound for driving cattle, and the animal paused to sniff over the food curiously, turning it with his nose.

“Shep! Heel!”

The dog gave an idle wuff, and loped to follow it’s master.

“Thank you kindly miss!” Ozzy’s voice boomed, large and boisterous in its snake-oil cheer. “Your business keeps the family fed, aye.”

The big cook was grinning at his last customer’s retreating back when Veth turned around, broken loaf resolutely clutched in one hand, and his smile widened as she came up to the booth. “We weren’t quite finished with business were we?” He said jovially. “All these good fresh wares, still ready for purchase! Maybe you’d be interested in a pie?”

“How much were you chargin’ for that.” She said, sliding the loaf onto his counter, and reaching for her little coin purse.

“Oh, that?” The baker wrinkled his nose, and tossed the loaf into his rubbish bin with a shrug. “That’s nowt good for only scraps and compost, look you, Missus can feed it to the chickens later. I’ll get you a fresh one.”

Veth blinked as the tubby cook lumbered away. Finally she mumbled reluctantly, “no I’ll...I’ll just get my other things please. I don’t need bread.”

“Eh, suit yourself,” Ozzy said with a shrug. “Though I doubt you could find a loaf better than my sourdough, this side’o the Empire!” And he guffawed loudly as Veth counted out her coins.

The plump little halfling woman turned away with a frown when the business was done, picking her way through the streets in a thoughtful cloud. Dodging around human legs and avoiding wagon wheels was second nature to her, and she reached home without further mishap. The little bell tinkled over the shop door as she pushed through, and she set down her market basket with a sigh.

“Ah! Veth, maybe you could help me!” Said a customer, hurrying forward with a tiny bottle in her hand. “I was wanting to purchase this? But I didn’t see anyone around.”

With glance around the shop, Veth confirmed that yes...Yeza was indeed nowhere to be seen, and she glued a helpful smile over her frown.

“Of course!” She said brightly, glancing at the bottle in the woman’s hand. “Distilled belladonna? I’ll uh...get that packaged up for you.”

“I would be so obliged.” The woman simpered.

It was easy to wrap up the bottle, and Veth made change for the woman on auto-pilot before curtseying her out of the shop. Once alone she breathed a sigh of relief, and pushed her head through the door to the basement.

“Yezzy dearest?” She shrilled in saccharine tones over the theatrical endearment, smiling dangerously.

“Oh! Veth! Perfect!” Came the bright reply, and not at all what she’d been expecting. “Could you just come down here for a second, I’m—this is rather delicate—if you could come hold something for me?”

Trying to keep her storm-cloud looming, Veth stumped down the stairs, frowning impressively. And melted as soon as she saw him. Her bumbling husband, with his bottle-glass spectacles and beaky nose, leather gloves on busy hands while he tinkered about with glass vials. He was just so adorable.

“I thought I told you to keep an eye on the shop, while I was out.” She said.

“Yes, yes. Now—ah—I need you to stand here—“ Yeza hastily agreed, not really paying attention, as he dragged over a stool. She stepped onto it, and he immediately shoved a vial into her hand while brandishing his own. “Now, I’m going to be mixing these, but I need—the burner heat is going to help—so you hold the catalyst, and I’m going to be warming my bottle a little while I stir. But I need you to drip that in here, so it reacts. Yes?”

He didn’t really wait for her to answer, before picking up his own bottle and holding it up above the flames. “Count of three.” He said, and Veth jumped to be ready. “One. Two. Three!”

“I bought gravy for supper.” Veth said, when the reaction was over, and Yeza was puttering happily about his workbench.

“That’s nice. Gravy’s my favorite...” Yeza hummed absently, scratching his nose with a dry fountain pen.

Veth rolled her eyes, leaning down before she got off the stool to kiss the rumpled top of his head. “That’s why I got it, silly.”

When she straightened up Yeza’s big eyes were blinking owlishly at her behind the sturdy glasses that made them even bigger, and he finally said “Oh” in a faintly confused voice.

“Yeah, so you’d better come to supper to eat it,” she said, jumping down from the stool. “Or I’ll kill ya in your sleep.”

***

Half of Veth had been expecting Yeza to forget about supper. It wasn’t an unheard of occurrence, mostly when he was really absorbed by his latest alchemical experiment, and she’d brought his plates of food to the basement before. But as the little cuckoo clock on a shelf above the wood stove chimed, Yeza’s light little footsteps came bumbling up the stairs.

“Wash your hands.” Veth said by way of a greeting, nodding at the wash bucket in the corner.

By the time he’d finished rinsing up, Veth had served a plate of biscuits with gravy poured over the top, and she set it down in front of him as he pulled out his chair. Fetching her own food she joined him at the kitchen table, and Yeza grinned at her. Privately she realized all over again for perhaps the thousandth time how much she loved his smile. It made his eyes get all crinkled up behind his glasses, so they looked like two little bright bits half tucked in his cheeks, and his big funny teeth showed like he never displayed them in front of other people because he was shy about them.

“Dawnfather’s blessing?” He said with a shit eating grin as he tucked his napkin into his shirt collar, and Veth snorted.

That had become a bit of an in-joke of theirs. Neither of them were particularly religious, but back when they’d first married, one of them had always suggested blessing the food. After nearly a week of awkward ceremony Yeza had hesitantly admitted that he didn’t actually pray over his meals but would keep doing it if she liked it. Then it had come out that Veth was in the same position, and had been praying because she thought _he’d_ like it. Now they still blessed the food on occasion, but it was always a joke when one of them did it.

“Thank you for the gravy,” Yeza said, as he picked up his knife and fork.

“Even if you couldn’t watch the shop for five minutes, while I went to get it.” She teased back.

For a moment the chink of silverware was the only sound in the room, as both fell to their suppers. It was a warm, cozy kind of silence, filled with thoughts and chewing. Yeza had that distant sort of look about him that meant he was still doing chemistry in his head, almost impossible to describe but easy for her to see when she looked at him. She watched him spear a thick chunk of biscuit slathered in gravy that he tucked into his cheek, and found herself turning sober again, as her face fell.

“I had a bit of an adventure today,” she said by way of an opening, trying to sound cheerful.

Yeza hummed absently around his food, paying more attention to the biscuit he was cutting than her face.

“A beggar nearly stole some of Ozzy’s bread.”

“In Felderwin?” Yeza joked, and Veth answered with a noncommittal hum of her own. “I’ll bet Ozzy wasn’t pleased about that.”

“He wasn’t.”

Her husband chuckled, and Veth watched him eat another bite, cheeks bulging as he chewed.

“Crownsguard got involved,” she said softly. “Seemed a little bit overkill honestly. It was just a loaf of bread. Ozzy didn’t even want it.”

“That’s the Crownsguard for you...” Yeza shook his head with disapproval. “Don’t like those men. Too eager to take offense.”

“Yeah...”

“At least they don’t bother us, aye?” He held up his fork like a baton to flourish, smiling brightly without the teeth only because he was chewing still, and didn’t finish his thought until he’d swallowed. “Halflings keep their own council.”

“I suppose,” Veth agreed, finding herself less than enthusiastic at the moment, and she shook herself off. “Anyway, he’s probably stuck in a jail cell somewhere, now.”

“I’m sure he’ll find that less than pleasant.” Yeza joked, though it was a dark joke for the cheerful tone he used.

She watched him fall back to his former attitude, pleasantly absorbed by his plate, and found herself picking at her own food, no longer quite so hungry. After a long moment she said, carefully neutral, “We have a little money laid by for extra expenses right?”

Yeza paused to blink up at her through his chewing. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re the one in charge of the accounts, dear.” He smiled brightly and scraped the last bite from his plate, before hopping down to rinse his dish in the wash bucket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tiny thing I agonized over _so much_ was what to have Forgot call his own body parts. Because dammit, it’s hard to differentiate between hands, and arms, and fingers, and thumbs, and all that shit. They all have very distinctive names and functions! 
> 
> In the end I decided to go for something a little more broad and loosely focused. Using choppy sentences, technically incorrect grammar, and so many goddamn combined word phrases, to build a sense of confused atmosphere. Ultimately, I think I like the direction I’m going. Lemme know what you guys think!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: there is a lot of referenced past abuse—emotional and physical—in this chapter. Also Bren thinking about himself with self-loathing, ableist language. There is a great deal of emotional duress and turmoil included in his viewpoint, that has elements of a panic attack, and elements of self harm, from an autistic person using unhealthy stimming behaviors to cope with anxiety

When Veth left the shop next afternoon, it was in the garb of war.

The garb of war wasn’t very different than her usual clothes. It mostly consisted of taking off the apron she wore around the house, wearing her heeled boots instead of house slippers, a nice silk scarf knotted firmly under the chin, a pocket watch and chain clipped to her girdle, and carrying a black umbrella. But the boots were her best (usually kept for only weddings and special parties) that gave her an extra inch of hight, so she totaled four foot five. The umbrella was a severe, pokey old thing in funeral black with angular struts. And the watch was her business accessory, worn only when she was running the shop for customers, and always laid carefully by in the coin till when the shop was closed up for the night. All together the scarf, and the umbrella, the boots, and the little glitter of gold at her waist made her feel tight, ship shape, and ten times the woman.

And that feeling made it warrior gear.

Knocking the dust out of the umbrella folds, Veth marched to the top of the basement stairs and called out, “Yeza-bumpkin?”

“Yes?” Came the soft spoken quaver up the stairs.

“I’m just stepping out for a bit to make some calls, so be good while I’m gone. The shop’s all closed up for luncheon.”

“Alright. I love you.”

“Love you.”

Pausing to turn around the sign that said ‘ _closed for mid-day. Sorry for the inconvenience_.’ Veth set off up the dusty streets. 

The hot summer sun beat down over everything, giving the air the wooly smell of warm grass, warm wood, warm dirt, and warm tar paper from the shingles of some of the houses. A low drone of insects mixed with the distant bleating of sheep, and even further off the twittering of birds almost muffled by the warm air. It made Veth grateful that she’d decided to bring the umbrella, when comfortably shaded by its big black weight.

Felderwin wasn’t a big town, so there was no prison. Only a squat ugly brick building that served as jail, Lawmaster’s office, and barracks for the Crown’s Guard, all rolled up into one. It had been built twenty years ago one day, when someone higher up the bureaucratic food chain decided that holding coroner’s court at the local tavern wasn’t fine enough for the respect befitting of the Empire’s civil presence. Since then it had huddled on itself, glaring out of a dark corner at all the other cheerful buildings around it; like an unwelcome piece of Rexxentrum transplanted into their little town, and woefully out of place there.

Veth wrinkled her nose at the sight of it, repulsed as she always was by the undefinable wrongness of the brick walls, with two other nice little houses on either side of it. But she squared her shoulders a moment later and marched up to the door. A bored looking young man behind a little desk looked up as she entered, and leaned forward as she approached.

“Name and business, please,” he inquired lazily.

“Veth Brenatto, here to see your prisoner.”

“Which prisoner?”

“What, do you have a supply warehouse full of convicts or something that you can’t know which one I’m talking about?” Veth said, a little sharply. This secretary’s cool demeanor was starting to irritate her.

“Not exactly.”

“Very well then, I want to see him.”

“I’m not supposed to grant visits outside of blood relations who can prove their family ties. And forgive the insinuation, ” The young guard leaned a little over the desk to examine her diminutive hight, “but you pretty clearly aren’t related.”

A hot flush rose in Veth’s cheeks, and she snapped out “Just do as your told young man, and there’ll be an extra five gold in it for you.”

“Make it eight.”

For a moment Veth wanted to haggle further, but the hostile demand in the guard’s eye made it clear that she’d loose that battle. He could afford to make demands. She could not. Finally she growled and began laying out her coin, while the young man watched. After she’d finished counting, he made a derogatory point of counting them again, then tucked them away into his pocket with a smug little grin.

“Right this way,” the guard said, pulling out a ring of keys from the desk.

***

Forgot couldn’t get out. 

Too clever, too stones, too strong. He’d pawed at the stones until his fingers were agony, and copper-iron-hot dripped down him, but his efforts hadn’t even made a dent in the cruel surface. Master always made good cages. Forgot sobbed, putting his fingers in his mouth in an attempt to dull the pain. Everything was hurting right now. It made him rock incessantly, trying to soothe himself, trying to get the buzzing inside to come out and go away. When he was out under the Overhead he could run the buzzing away. Move, and move, and move until he was all sleepy-empty.

Now he had nowhere to go.

Nothing. Nothing. No way-outs. No escapes. Frustration and distress boiled up inside him, clawing all around his middle like it was looking for ways out too, and he screwed his seeing shut to try and block it out. No use. No mercy. Stupid, useless, _worthless_ Forgot. With another sob he threw himself against the wall, making a moan of pain startle out of him, and he cringed around himself.

But he couldn’t stop himself from doing it again. And again. He couldn’t stop. The impulse was bigger than him. It needed to push something down. Needed to find something big to fight; and he battered himself into exhaustion. He was aching now. All one side of him felt like throbbing pain, with a bloom of burning-stings where he’d thumped his head against the wall until it left red spots behind, when he’d grown too tired to use his side anymore.

Then the crying came.

That was worse. Master hated crying. He always used to punish Forgot, when his eyes made tears. Master’s face would turn into stone, and he would hit Forgot even though it only made Forgot cry harder. Then Master would be disappointed, and punish Forgot for being weak, no matter how much Forgot tried to show he was sorry for his badness.

As soon as the crying rose up in him Forgot wailed, trying to squeeze his seeing away until the crying would stop. But it only came out, and out, and out. He couldn’t control it. Forgot was weak, and stupid. He should be called Failure instead. That was what Master said he was. And Master was right. Forgot was a Failure. He couldn’t even not-cry.

A distant sound startled him out of failure-feelings, before he could do more than begin to scratch at his defective eyes. One distress was rapidly replaced with another, as self-hatings gave way to dreading-terror. People were coming. Bad people. Master’s peoples. He’d wanted to dig away before they came for him, but the cruel wall was too hard.

He couldn’t let them get him. But what was the use of that? He couldn’t make it happen. He couldn’t get away. If they wanted him, they’d catch him, whether he tried to escape or not. The desires of bad peoples were inevitable.

At least he could pretend. Sometimes he could avoid them. If he was good, and small, and stayed quiet for them. For a few of Master’s people, hiding and looking like nothing had been enough. Some of the others didn’t care if he was good, or if he was bad, or if he was loud, or if he was quiet.

But it was the best he had, so Forgot hastily curled up as small as he could make himself in the corner. He even did it on his side, so at least part of him would be protected by the dirt. It wasn’t complete but it would do.

If he sat like this his back would be protected against one wall, his head was sheltered in the safest part of the corner, and he drew his legs up to protect the rest of him behind them. Parts of him were still exposed, but not as much the important things. Head, middle, the limbs he used to reach and touch things. Head was important, because it would make him really deadly-sick if he injured it. Middle, same reason. It was another place where he knew there were lots of vital-insides underneath.

Arms were only important to protect from some people, but Master had always wanted them. Wanted to put his burning Torture-Glass under them, so Forgot would feel them when he moved, and they _hurt._ All times they hurt, but Forgot couldn’t take them out because each one felt like ripping bones out, and it had made red-iron bleed from his ears and his eyes and his nose the one time Master had tried. That was before Forgot Failed, but he had memory-images of how sick and dying he’d got.

The worst hurting Master ever did to him was always from Torture-Glass inside of him. 

The two people that stopped outside his stone-cage were too far away to see. Master’s cages were usually bright so Forgot couldn’t hide, but this place was strangely dark and murky. It meant he couldn’t see his enemies, but maybe they couldn’t see him either? Forgot hoped so anyway. Maybe they’d go away if he stayed still...

“He’s not a looker, that’s for sure.” One of the peoples made speaking, his meaning-sounds steeped in bored, lazy tone of disregard. “Pretty sorry specimen, this one. He was so fuckin’ filthy when he got carted in, they had to wash their hands after touching him.”

“Little bit’a dirt never hurt anybody.” Another speaking, female this time, came sounding sharp and irritated.

“He don’t seem to think so anyway”

Nothing answered, and the speaking gave way to silence for a bit. Forgot huddled, just as tense as ever, while the stillness grated on him. They were trying to trick him, and be so quiet he forgot they were there. But Forgot was cautious. Patient. In a waiting game bad people always got bored of him. Forgot’s best skill was endless, unwavering patience. Master always said so. To sit in the same place for hours, to learn things without ever growing tired or careless, to stay alert without drinks and eating. This was Forgot’s great gift. If all they did was look, he would outlast them.

Sure enough, the taller bad person—the one with the bored, careless sounds—clanged against the cage’s metal door. It was loud, and abrasive, and sent a jolt of shocking sound-pain through Forgot’s head. “Here! You!” The person clanged again. Forgot wanted to cover his hearing. “Come on out, and let the lady look at you.”

“Stop that!”

“In just trying to stir him up for ya. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

“Well stop it. It’s annoying.”

***

Still fuming, Veth crept up beside the guard, peering in through the bars. It was a miserable little place. There were no windows. There was hardly even a door, only a rusting set of bent and warped iron bars to prevent escape. The scent of old hey, and old waste, and old squalor hung like a jailhouse miasma on the air. And even when her eyes had grown accustomed to the dusk, there wasn’t much to look at. A bucket in one corner, and a ragged little huddle in the other that might be a prisoner, and might also be a threadbare, formless rag.

“He don’t move much, really...leastways not when we’ve been around to catch him at it.” The guard said, leaning carelessly against the bars. “Just been sitting over there like that since we locked him in.”

Veth didn’t answer, pressing her face as close to the bars as she could. Though the effort didn’t give her any different results than before. In this instance at least, the guard appeared to be speaking the truth. Other than the involuntary flinch she’d barely managed to track when it was startled out of him, the prisoner was so still that she couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

“Can you unlock the door?” She asked, looking up at the guard. “Can I get in, and see him closer?”

For a moment she was afraid he would outright refuse, or demand more coin she could ill afford to spend. But he only gave the lazy shrug of one who didn’t give a shit, and fished out another key. While she stood back he unlocked the door, and then she slipped around the edge of the bars to take a few hesitant steps across the cell, staring intently at the unresponsive figure.

“What’s his bail?” She asked softly, almost afraid to fill the corners of the dungeon with her voice.

“I’m sure its—” the guard began, then cut himself off. When she looked over her shoulder, he was frowning with calculation, and finally said decisively. “Six gold and four silvers.”

“Right...” Veth muttered, considering the mental amount of her purse.

Doubtless the _real_ fine was only coppers, maybe a couple silver at the most. The rest would likely never find its way into any account book or ledger the Lawmaster ever laid eyes on. But six gold...she could do it. It would be tight—no more gravy for Yeza till next month or so—but she could do it.

That was if she even managed to get the beggar to cooperate with her though.

Cautiously she took another few steps closer, and looked him over again. Up close she could see much better a starved cowering shape, huddled up in a bundle of knees and elbows, like he was hiding his face against the dirt. His limbs were too sharp and knobby, the ugly famine of it made her sick with empathy.

Tiptoeing forward she closed the distance. But the closer she got the more threatening and invasive it felt to stand over him like he was supposed to grovel beneath her or something, and she found her knees hitting the floor. It felt a little better that way, and she bent over to match his fetal position, trying for a better angle of his face.

Then she saw a glitter of eyes fix on her, staring at her watchfully through all the hair in his way. He was barely clothed fit to be seen, dressed in little more than threadbare rags that were falling to pieces, and so dirty that she couldn’t even begin to guess what the original materials might have been. The hair on his head was long and unkempt, matted with dirt and who knew what else, falling unheeded in his eyes, and he looked half wild.

She could hardly tell how old he was through all the filth on his clothes, but the longer she looked the more certain she got. He couldn’t be more than his early-twenties, if even that old. His build was too slight to be a fully mature adult, and the facial hair on his chin was patchy. He was just a fucking kid. Covered in dirt, dressed in little better than limp rags hanging on bony shoulders, staring at her wide eyed like a half-feral animal, but a kid nevertheless.

A scared, starving _kid_.

He was watching her intently, that much was certain. She could see him paying attention. But he never said anything even though she waited. Then she realized with a frown of confusion that he couldn’t talk because he had his fingers in his mouth. It would seem almost comical, if it wasn’t so strange and awkward, but he looked more than a little like a child sucking on their thumb. For a moment she couldn’t think what he was doing, before she noticed that his lips were stained red, and so were his fingers, and so was his shirt where his other hand was tucked against his chest.

A lurch of unidentifiable concern made her reach hastily for the hand in his mouth, and he cowered back so fearfully it frightened her away. His eyes looked huge with panic, body trembling, and breathing rabbit fast. Steeling herself again and trying not to loose her nerve, Veth reached forward more slowly this time, making the entire gesture a telegraphed approach he could clearly see coming. No more fearful movements seized his body, but he didn’t look one bit less terrified, only frozen, apparently resigned to whatever he thought she was doing. When she finally touched his hand, he flinched but didn’t pull away, a tiny sound keening in his throat as she pulled the fingers out of his mouth. It took her a moment longer than it should to realize he was _whimpering_.

It was horrible.

Veth’s eyes burned hot and unexpected. This was all so deeply fucked up, and so obviously wrong. Deeply, deeply wrong. Someone had done horrible things to this boy...there was just no other possible explanation for this situation. But Veth didn’t have the beginning of a clue what to do with that knowledge. All she had were questions and no answers.

“Shhhhh,” she soothed, drawing his hand further into her lap.

It was blood. The red smeared on his face was blood. All four of his fingers were skinned raw at the tips, open and bleeding sluggishly, with the nails torn and ripped past the quick, and another rapid glance around showed her why. The mortar and stones in the corner where he was huddling were scratched, and streaked with more of that telltale blood that made her realize...He’d been trying to dig his way out.

“Oh.” She said, and then found herself chuckling half hysterically. “That’s not going to work very well.”

Complete impulse carried her as she squeezed his fingers gently and patted the back.“I’ve gotta pay bail first. Then we can get you out.” She whispered, forlorn, and placed a dry peck of the lips on his knuckles. The boy still didn’t answer her. His fear was still a mask over his face, and Veth looked at it with a frown. On instinct she released his hand, watching him quietly draw it back, and did her best to smile at him with reassurance.

“I won’t hurt you, my boy.” She whispered. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Care would be needed. Clearly. Care, and tact, and more than a little persuasion, if she was going to get him moving with her.

Gently.

That was as the word. She would have to do everything gently. So she waited a little before she stood up again, going slow and watching the pale glint of icy blue eyes track her every move from the gloom of his curtaining hair. Then she was upright and self assured again, and the nameless human in front of her was once more a furtive shadow.

“You said six gold, four silver, right?”

***

Forgot was confused.

Everything was confusing for Forgot somehow. The hurt in his middle, and the memory-images, and all the not-thinks in his head. It was mixed up, complicated, and scary-unknown. But this was more.

This woman was different. She’d come to look at him in Master’s place, and anyone allowed in Master’s place could only be Master’s people. All her things were nice, and she came too close, and frightened him with touching. But no hurt. No angry noises and making him pain. She let go without hitting him or anything.

He couldn’t stop shivering after she’d released him from the mouth-touch she’d given him, overwhelmed by big-important-feelings. It was good. It shouldn’t be. Bad, bad people wanted mouth-touching, and not even all of those. Master’s people were bad, so this mouth-touch was bad. But Not-Hurt-Yet’s had been a good feel. Like the empty-thinks and hurting memory-images told him Mutter-Mother’s used to be. Dry and soft. 

Forgot shuddered unhappily, trying to push away the feeling. He wanted more of it. Not-Hurt-Yet’s gentleness had been nice, like nothing was nice for long times.

“Alright, lets get you out of here.”

Not-Hurt-Yet stood up and held her hand out open in front of him, waiting. Forgot stared at it. He didn’t know what this was, and not knowing meant punishing, when he didn’t do the right thing.

“Come on.” The woman beckoned at him invitingly.

Forgot swallowed, all cold and shivery in his middle, blinking to not cry. He knew what this was now. Sometimes Master had done this: calling him, to make Forgot come and be hurt. Master’s people too. They could have forced him, but they liked making him do it by himself, creep forward to ask for the pain instead of run away and hide from it. If he didn’t obey their tells, they would just hurt him more, to make him good the next time.

At first Forgot hadn’t done it. When he was a Failure, but a strong Failure. He would run away first, and then hit when they cornered him, kick when they pinned him down, bite when they got too close, and resort to muffled screaming when they muzzled him. But it got hard. Too hard. Too much work. Forgot knew the rule by now. Obey Master, or he’ll make you.

Not-Hurt-Yet was still waiting, and he couldn’t do anything else, so Forgot uncurled just enough to obediently lay his arm across her outstretched hand so she could hurt it. She changed as soon as he did, getting all stiff and squeezing his wrist with one hand while she prodded his skin with the other so the knife-lumps under them moved, and Forgot cowered with everything but the arm he couldn’t keep to himself, jitters of waiting-for-pain burning his middle. She would cut him. What if she had Torture-Glass like Master did? Or wanted to rip them out?

He didn’t know which was worse. Torture-Glass made his think too awake— _an exhausting maze to go round and round in, a stream of numbers and symbols he couldn’t shut off. Days without sleep, the agony of sitting still, fire scorching under his skin—_ But if she tried to take them out, it would kill him. Too soon. An escape yes, but he wasn’t ready yet.

None of that happened though. As soon as he shrank away she let him go, so suddenly that it startled him, and he was shocked into looking up at her. The tiny woman was wringing her hands like she’d hurt them, and her eyes looked wide and frightened.

“Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare ya.” Her speaking sounded strange too, high and vulnerable. Full of feelings.

She was upset? Why was she unhappy? He’d done what she wanted, been a good boy and followed all the rules, but she didn’t like it? And no pain. Why did she change? Wasn’t this the part where he got hurt? But she still didn’t do it. He was confused again. She wasn’t obeying the rules, and Forgot didn’t know what to think about it. She shouldn’t be so soft if she was bad.

Meanwhile, during his disoriented confusion Not-Hurt-Yet had calmed, and the woman beckoned again. “Come on.” Soft, encouraging sounds. “This way.”

Forgot hesitated. He was still frightened to follow her. She sounded nice. Inviting. Like she had good things waiting for him, wherever it was she wanted to go. But those things could be tricks. There was too much unknowning. Because he was stupid, and always got out-thinked, and couldn’t understand. But she was inching her body toward the opened enter-exit, and staying in Master’s place was also bad. Even if he got pain for leaving it, maybe he could escape too.

He crept after her shrinkingly, and Not-Hurt-Yet moved slowly away, making him match all her steps. He didn’t know what to think of that either. Being made to follow was bad, and he didn’t like it. But she wasn’t touching or herding him, and getting to go on his own was nice. So many peoples got impatient first, and dragged or kicked him, because they didn’t want to wait. Not-Hurt-Yet was good like this. She lead him to the enter-exit, and Forgot crouched behind her while she did speak with the other Master’s-person. After a moment Not-Hurt-Yet pulled round-brights from somewhere, and passed them to the person, who stepped out of the way, and Not-Hurt-Yet started leading him again.

And they just kept going. No trick, no change, no turn-on-him. Just more opened enter-exits. It was strange. Made more big important-feels shout in his think. Why were they just...letting him go? Master would never do that. Bad peoples always trapped him in, and held him down, and made him stay. Maybe they’d replaced him? The round-brights would take his place? But how could that be when round-brights were not him?

The bright Overhead made him blink, when he was finally out under it. The Tall-Bored hadn’t come, and now they were back in the walking-way, surrounded by shelter-places. And nobody was making angry noises or hitting him. It was just him, and Not-Hurt-Yet, standing beside him as he crouched in the dirt looking blankly around.

“Well there ya go, you’re out.”

Forgot jumped back to attention, watching her mouth move with jittery uncertainty. She moved closer again and he huddled to turn his shoulder towards her, so if she hit him it would be there and not his middle. But she was pulling out more of the round-brights, and after a moment held them out, like she was waiting to drop them somewhere.

“I don’t have much, but you can take that. Buy yourself some food, maybe. I’m sure you need it.”

When Forgot continued to stare at her, she made an impatient summons with her free hand, and Forgot realized he’d messed up again. It wasn’t as frightening-feeling this time, when he offered his arm. Even if she used it to hurt him, he was out of the closed-place, and could run away if she did. Still he was braced for pain, so when she only dropped the round brights in his hand again, Forgot blinked down at them startled.

Why was _he_ getting round-brights now? Weren’t they all for Master’s person? Forgot turned the objects over and about, frowning vaguely. They still didn’t look like him at all. He tried sniffing instead, but it didn’t smell like an eat for swallowing. Just to check, he ran a broad lick over them, but nothing happened. Only a sharp, bitter on his taste. Still mystified, Forgot put one in his mouth, waiting for it to do something. But it just sat there, making more of the bitter tasting.

A sigh made him stiffen and glance guardedly at the little woman beside him. “You have no idea what those are, do you?”

She gestured for him to come again, “Here,” holding out her hand once more. “Just give em back.”

Forgot looked down at her outstretched hand, then at the useless round-brights she’d given him, and understanding dawned. Bending his head, he opened his mouth to let the round-bright fall off his tongue and back with the others. Then with cautious obedience, he passed them back to her, chinking into her palm.

“Well that’s...lovely.”

He still had no idea what that had been about.

But even after he did what she wanted, it suddenly seemed that it hadn’t been what she wanted. One hand tucked the round-brights away, and the other reached out to grab him. Instinct made him flinch, but instead of hurting or trapping him, her hand pinched the dirty-cover around his shoulders instead.

“Come on.” She pulled on his dirty-covering, with more of those invitation sounds. “We can go to my house. Get you a square meal at least.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love all the different fics I’ve seen out there about Caleb’s scars. Actually I wanted to write a sickfic where Bren’s body is basically addicted to having the residuum in his arms, and when Trent tries to remove them it nearly kills him. But ya know...the writing machine wants what it wants. So it was referred to here only as a past event, and that’s why Bren still has the crystals under his skin.
> 
> Also. What the fuck ElphieBLW? “ _Master-Teacher-Monster_?!?!?” How the FUCK AM I EVER SUPPOSED TO THINK OF A NAME FOR TRENT THAT’S BETTER THAN THAT?!?!?!? I’m wracking my brain to think of something Bren would call Trent in my fic, but that is literally so perfect and I can’t think of anything else, so plain ol’ “Master” will have to do. I Resent. (With love and Admiration)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Bren remembers the behavior of past abusers in this chapter, who punished him physically or neglected his basic needs, and continues to use ableist and self-loathing language about himself.

“Let’s get you a square meal at least...”

Extremely uncertain of what he was supposed to be doing now, Forgot padded a little closer to her, sidling up to her side on creeping hands and knees. She leaned around him to slot a hand under his thigh, making Forgot prepare himself to turn around under her guidance like some of the peoples wanted. But instead she put her other hand over his knee, and then she was pushing there while pulling on his thigh, which forced him to straighten his legs, and he realized she was making him go upright.

Oh. She wanted him two-legs.

Once he was up, she pinched a bit of his dirt-covering-things, and started pulling him along again. Meek and nervous, Forgot went with her, as they kept going down the walking-way. There were no big noises and lots of people now, and he didn’t catch that home-smell anywhere around, as he turned his face to sniff. It was all quiet and hot-stuffy.

After lots of walks, she brought him forward to the enter-exit of another shelter-place, and opened it. Forgot wilted with disappointment, terrified-feels buzzing around his think and making him shiver, while his middle was all cold inside. He didn’t like closed places. Places where he couldn’t see the Overhead were bad. No way out. Something made a ringing noise when Not-Hurt-Yet opened the enter-exit, and she looked up at him with waiting.

Forgot didn’t walk through.He squeezed himself, tip-toed himself, wedged himself through. Like he was sneaking through a crack. Leading with his shoulder again, so his whole hurt-me-here-side was out in front, he stepped just far enough to be in and not out anymore. But it wasn’t at all like the other, cold, hard, Master’s-place, and the surprise made him blink with big confusion-feels as he looked around. It was all warm, all...brown. Little, and full of shiny things, with a big look-through-square that let Overhead-light in. Not-Hurt-Yet made scuffing steps behind him as she came in too, but Forgot didn’t even notice her through all the looking. There were so many things.

“Here it is.” Not-Hurt-Yet made speak at his side, while Forgot didn’t even look at her. “It ain’t much, but it’s home.”

Finally Forgot looked down again, stiffening when Not-Hurt-Yet touched him suddenly. She was balancing on one foot while doing something with the other one, and she’d put a hand up to lean on his leg. Being very good and still, Forgot stayed stiff until she finally kicked two dusty-black-things off her feet, and she stepped down to be smaller than she was.

“Come on.” She gestured again. “Let’s go to the kitchen and get you sorted out.”

Following her sign, he shuffled after her again, across the stuffed-with-shiny-place until he reached another enter-exit and stopped. It was Home. Just like Home. A sharp memory-image of some different place rising before his think so suddenly it made him stumble, all weak with feels— _warmth on his hands, liebling taste the soup, Vatti’s clumping boots, Zum Geburtstag viel Glück, little-happy-me_ —Not-Hurt-Yet glanced back at him from where she was pattering around, and beckoned with a chuckle.

“Well, come on in. I won’t eat you...not that you’d make more’n a mouthful anyway...”

With wide eyed obedience Forgot edged his way in, hunching his shoulders. There were home-smells here, and home-meanings here. All the warmness made him small, full of some ugly, dirty, guilty-feel. He shouldn’t be here. He was very, very bad, not-good. After a moment of him just standing, Not-Hurt-Yet went over to a flat-surface-with-legs, and pulled out another smaller-thing-with-legs.

“Sit down.”

He didn’t know what this meant. This four-leg-thing. It made feels skitter around his think, afraid of going wrong. Maybe she was giving it to him? Like the round-brights? She wasn’t holding it out to him, but she was also very small. Maybe she couldn’t lift it? Trying to do his best Forgot picked it up, holding it close to his chest to show he was keeping it.

But Not-Hurt-Yet immediately waved her arms, and grabbed one of the legs to take it back. This time she play-acted sitting down on it, and understanding bloomed as he watched with a twisty stupid-feeling in his chest. He was always such a not-smart. So he sat. The sitting-thing was too small, but he was trying very hard to be careful and good, so he obeyed anyway.

Hurrying back and forth, Not-Hurt-Yet brought several things to where he was sitting. The objects she unwrapped were familiar in a way his empty-middle recognized before his think did. She had home-smelling-eats like what the peoples had hurt him for taking, and ragged longing raked through his middle at the sight of it, shuddering in his chair. With a shiny-sharp she cut off a big piece, and smeared something red over it. Empty-wanting made him snatch it from her as soon as she offered it, and he gripped it possessively in both hands to bite, tearing off a mouthful. Home-taste filled his mouth with real, and soft, and sweet from the red-mash.

Good.

But bad. No sooner had he got his teeth into it, than Mean-Now took it back, and he sobbed.

Always-Laugh, one of the bad-peoples at the white-cage, had done this to him. Show him good things, and then take them away to make him cry. He’d stopped fighting back, because the man would just keep testing him till he was tired. But then Always-Laugh had started making up new games when the old ones didn’t work, and the bad man was so clever and tricky Forgot couldn’t learn them. Even when Forgot had been watching out, sure that at last Always-Laugh had gotten bored of him, the man would take things away when Forgot tried again.

But this time his think would know better. He would be smart-understanding. He wouldn’t cry, because the eat was gone now, and he knew better than to make reaches for it. So he looked, filled with wanting, but grew still again. Mean-Now tore a small part of the good-eat off and held it out, and Forgot forced himself not to take, even while wanting made him full of empty-pain. It was a trick. Take-and-give-back-games were always trick.

“Here.” Mean-Now made a little inviting gesture.

Same, same. Forgot knew this part. Always-Laugh did this too, acting like he was good, when the take-back was waiting.

“Take it.”

Still tricks.

“Take it!” Mean-Now was getting angry.

Angry because her play wasn’t working, and Forgot was being smart. This was the bad part about the peoples. There were no right-ways with them. Not really. If he did what they wanted, they’d hurt him, and if he didn’t do what they wanted, they’d hurt him until he did. He could play her game and let her take things from him, or he could be smart-right, and get punished for not playing.

He was so busy with painful-feels he wasn’t ready when she jumped at him. He whimpered and cowered away, but not before she’d already grabbed his face. She leaned toward him, and Forgot went completely still, panting from the afraid-of-her feeling. Then she held the good-stuff right against his lips until he opened his mouth to let her put it inside. Forgot reeled back again when she let go, breathing hard and unblinking, while he closed his mouth tight around the precious-eating she’d given back.

“There.”

Mean-Now ripped off another chunk and held it out. He didn’t understand it but carefully offered his hand. And she gave him that chunk too.

“Now will you stop being a pill?”

What was this game? Where was the trick? Why was he allowed to have them now? What had changed? It was like Mean-Now was trying to make him think she was Not-Hurt-Yet again, but that didn’t make any sense. Why would she be both?

“Gods you’re slow at this.” Mean-Now-pretending-Not-Hurt tore off another bite, and held it out.

Now he had home-eats in both hands.

He didn’t understand this! Forgot finally swallowed, watching to see her react and be angry. Still no pain, still no change. Carefully he lifted his hand to eat the filling-sweet in it, and nothing happened, even while he chewed. She just tore off another bite, and let him take it.

One by one she kept playing this strange new game of waiting for him to swallow before giving him more. And Forgot was confused again. She had been mean before, but now she was nice again? Why did she keep changing her mind? What did it mean! Part of Forgot was almost wanting her to stop. If she’d just be like all the others, at least then he could know what to expect, and be all ready for it. This was just confusing. And he was tired of it.

***

By the end of the meal Veth still had no idea what the holdup in the middle of it had been. What had made the dirty human in front of her so reluctant to accept the food from her, even when he’d clearly been green with envy over it. She’d taken it away from him to keep him from gorging himself, because he seemed bent on literally inhaling the bread and jam if left to his own devices. And that was maybe(?) something you shouldn’t do after being malnourished? She really didn’t know much about the issue, but that was one thing she remembered hearing somewhere, so she’d forced him to ration himself. Except he’d immediately gone to the other extreme of apparently being determined to starve himself, until she’d almost physically forced food into his mouth.

Somehow she’d gotten him eating again, and that was good. Even if it was painfully slow going, and she could tell he was still upset. He kept looking at her anxiously, like he was expecting her to do something, and he’d pause between bites, just to furtively scan around the kitchen. The food fixation was still there, but much more possessive and cautious, refusing to swallow anything unless he had a bite of bread clutched in both fists first. Veth gave up trying to make him do anything else after a while, resignedly handing him one bite at a time in weird, uncomfortable silence.

His hands were an absolute mess of strawberry jam and bread crumbs by the time he’d finished, and he was still looking at her expectantly. But Veth was faltering with uncertainties now. It seemed kind of stupid to feed him any more until she was sure the last slice went down without any issues. When no more bread was forthcoming, the beggar apparently gave up waiting for it, and moved to start sucking the jam off his grimy fingers.

“Ah—that’s—lets not do that.” Veth hastily remonstrated, making the human jump and startle. His hair-trigger anxiety made her wince, but she forced herself to shake it off, and glanced with distaste at the unidentifiable muck on his hands which might have come from almost anywhere. “I’ll getcha a wash rag at least.”

Dragging over the half empty water bucket, Veth squeezed out the crocheted dishrag, and made a gesture for him to give her his hands. She was starting to adjust to the idea of pointing and pulling him around. It wasn’t one bit less strange and unnerving than it had been the first time, but she’d gotten the picture by now. For whatever unknown reason, coherent speech or vocal directions went completely over his head, and he didn’t obey them. Mimes and gestures had been the only thing to reliably get a reaction out of him. And even then he didn’t really do what she’d actually wanted half the time.

The boy reluctantly offered his hands, and all the same ritual of performing a mundane task in complete silence was gone through over again, while she started washing his hands off. So much quiet was unnerving, making Veth feel awkward and shaky. It was like every one of the worst parties and social gatherings she’d ever been to. She was stuck in the same room with a complete stranger, painfully conscious of the silence, yet woefully unable to fill it.

It only took the agonizing two minutes of scrubbing his hands off to make Veth sick of it, and she dropped the rag back into the dishtub with a tight smile. “Now if you’ll gimme just a sec, I’ll be right back.” Veth said carefully, even though she still had no real idea whether he’d understand her. Their track record was starting to indicate that he didn’t, but speaking like he could still felt more natural that just leaving him, without a word of warning.

Veth hastily retreated back into the shop, leaning back against the wall out of sight, just to stop and breathe. Gods this was awful. This might have been a really, really stupid plan. What had she been thinking? That was the answer though, wasn’t it? She hadn’t been thinking. She’d just taken one look at this filthy, feral, starving human kid and couldn’t resist.

After thirty seconds of mild panic...maybe not so mild, but she was coping...she forced her eyes open again. Ok. She couldn’t just have a meltdown behind the shop counter all day. Especially with a filthy beggar still loose and unwatched in her kitchen. Veth straightened her spine, beating the dust out of her skirt, even though there wasn’t any. Having a plan felt better, and it carried Veth’s feet to the basement stairs with more self-assurance than she’d had to buoy her up for the last half hour.

Carefully unlatching the door and going softly down the stairs, Veth peeked into the laboratory. Yeza was scanning over the rows of alchemy books neatly arranged on a shelf near his work table, and didn’t notice her until she called out to him. Just the sight of his familiar, bumbling figure made her feel better, and she paused just to smile at him and bask in the warm feeling in her chest. Then she very purposefully stomped her feet a little on the bottom two steps, and called, “Yeza?”

The halfling alchemist jumped with surprise as she appeared at the bottom of the stairs, then smiled and good-naturedly offered up his lips for her to give him a peck as she came over. “Enjoyed your visits?” He asked, still casting half an eye over the books in front of him.

It took Veth a moment to remember the excuse for her absence he was referring to, and when she did remember, the recollection didn’t make her feel any better. Now she would not only have to tell him about the stranger upstairs, but also admit that she’d purposely lied, in order to go pay his bail. In her silence Yeza had pulled out one of the tomes, hauling it back to his table, and Veth scuffed the floor with her toe as she watched him.

“N-not exactly...” she began, by way of an opening. “They weren’t social calls I went on. I actually um...only visited one person.”

“Oh, well who’d you go visit then?”

And here it was. The not so fun part. She hadn’t even had time to work up her nerve for it yet...

“Well. That’s. I went—“ Veth started and then stopped three times, awkwardly shifting her feet as she cleared her throat. Then she finally seized on a fresh angle that seemed as good as any and said “You remember that little adventure I told you about yesterday?”

Yeza hummed noncommittally, digging in his ear with a pinkie as he flipped through pages of his alchemy book.

“When I saw that beggar get arrested for stealing from Ozzy’s booth?”

“Oh! Yes of course, dear! It seemed to make an impression on you, I remember.” Yeza said, while his face brightened and he looked up at her. Then a long silence passed where they just looked at each other, like Yeza was waiting for her to speak, and Veth couldn’t imagine how. Then Yeza finally said “Was there...something relevant about it?”

“Well I mighta gone and paid his bail? And brought him home? And he’s sitting in our kitchen upstairs?”

Yeza’s eyes went round, apparently unable to think of a response.

“And he’s—I really want you to look at him? Maybe?” Veth plunged on, a bit desperately, and with the frazzled idea of being in for a penny and a pound. “I think he needs help? He’s been hurt.”

“And you think we can help him.” Yeza said gently, not as if he were judging her, just merely clarifying.

“Yeah.” She admitted with a sigh, shoulders dropping as if she’d expelled a burden with it. “Yeah I think we could help. Just for a little.”

“Then we’ll help.” Yeza said with quiet decision, turning to begin straightening his papers and close his book. “We’ll help.”

Veth could have cried with gratitude as she watched him begin tidying up his papers and set the alchemy supplies aside for later. He was always so good to her. So good, so kind, so accommodating. Nothing like the handsome Prince Charming she’d conjured for herself as a child. That fantasy was nothing like Yeza, with his curly little sideburns and glasses slipping down his nose every other minute. But the real man was so much sweeter to her. Open to all her feelings, and all her mischief, and all her little quirks.

When he’d finished packing all the papers and vials away, Yeza took her hand with a confiding little smile, and paused to give her a peck on the lips before saying, “Shall we?”

She led the way upstairs, and they passed quickly through the deserted outer shop. At the kitchen door Veth stopped, suddenly changing her mind a few steps back, and halting. Holding a finger to her lips, she whispered, “Just take a quiet look first. See what you think of him...” Yeza tiptoed after her, as she drew him to the door, and both halflings looked in carefully together.

The beggar had moved. He was sitting on the floor in one corner, with his limbs all curled up, like he was accustomed to sitting in a way that took up the least amount of space and protected him from attackers. The kitchen drawers around him were open, and he was bending over something in his lap that seemed to absorb him. For a moment suspicion and indignation rose in Veth’s veins at the thought of all the things he might have been trying to steal the moment she wasn’t looking. Yeza’s aunt had given them a set of three antique sterling silver spoons at their wedding...

But it wasn’t the spoons. A moment later the human held his prize up to the light as if to look at it, and Veth recognized it as a makeshift contraption Yeza had invented for her to pit cherries with. It had two handles which opened and closed, and at the apex of the vice was a hole to put the cherries in, and a blade that would cut the fruit and pit apart from each other. The boy was clearly fascinated by it. He kept turning it over and over in his hands to look at it from every side, and gently pull the handles to make it move. And he was smiling. A tiny, cautious little grin of delighted intrigue, as if this simple utensil were the most clever puzzle he could imagine.

He poked his finger into the slot where the cherries were supposed to go, and Yeza started forward as it looked like the beggar was about to close the vise on his finger, but Veth snatched him back to keep watching. The beggar didn’t crush his finger, instead Veth realized he’d tucked the rest of the bread loaf in his lap, and he now tore off a chunk to poke into the cherry-pitter. The two handles closed, the contraption pressed down, and the bread came away separated.

The boy before her, this strange, wide-eyed innocent she was secretly witnessing, laughed with stealthy delight. It was a careful sound, hushed and breathy, which he hastily smothered by biting his bottom lip. But the giddy triumph had been there, and his eyes still glowed with it, enchanting years, and dirt, and misery away from his face as if it never had been there. Veth couldn’t get enough of it.

All her tasks and doubts forgotten, Veth wanted nothing more than to keep watching him punch holes in her bread. A knot of something warm, and tender, and protective was exalting in it, fascinated by it. Just like her boy seemed fascinated by the tool in his hand. But Yeza was drawing her away, tugging at her hand until she was forced to step back from the door again, and she came to herself in the quiet center of the shop.

“This is your beggar?” Yeza asked carefully.

“Yeah.”

“Veth...” Yeza said, eyes wide and full of doubts and concerns.

“I _know_.” Veth said, guilty and wilting a little under the plain concerns she read in his face.

“He’s like a child.” Yeza hissed, “And you what to take him in? How are we possibly going to take care of him?”

“Where do you want him to go if we send him away?” Veth asserted back almost savagely. “Those people out there,” waving at the shop windows with no degree of specificity, “won’t help. They won’t even see a person. He’s just an animal to them. A useless burden to be discarded because he’s helpless, and needy, and can’t contribute. The crownsguard beat him senseless, just for stealing bread...” Veth’s throat closed, unable to keep going as unexpected emotion hindered her. She was suddenly so invested, and she had no idea when she’d started caring.

This boy was like her...Awkward...Poor...

Less than.

Yeza made a distressed noise as he tugged at his hair. His face was a mask of conflict, deep and perplexed.

“Please?” Veth begged softly, watching his struggle. “We can make it work somehow. I know we can. The shop’s doing well, and I’ve got a little bit saved. And I can turn my things, so I won’t need new clothes this winter.”

Yeza suddenly laughed, and tears glittered in his eyes. “The last thing I could ever imagine is my pretty wife having no new dresses to wear!”

“It’s not such a tragedy.” Veth snapped, rolling her eyes in scorn, but flushing with pleasure all the same. “I wore turned dresses every other winter growing up, to save coin for seed. And I’m not pretty.”

Hairy brown arms were suddenly surging forward to catch her by the waist, and Yeza pulled her into a tight, tight hug. “You can scrimp and save all you want, my dear.” He mumbled into her shoulder. “But I insist on the new dresses this winter.”

“So we’re keeping him?” Veth said, dizzied by this unexpected surrender.

“Yes, we can take him in for a while.” Yeza said, pulling back to give her a beaming smile while he held her at arm’s length as if she were a prized painting to admire. “We’ll at least give it a try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small explanatory note about this chapter: for those of you that might not know “turning dresses” was a way to preserve clothes longer where women would take their dresses apart at the seams and re-sew them inside-out, so the fresh fabric inside the dress was exposed. It was typically a way for women of the lower classes to double the amount of time you wore a dress, assuming it wasn’t torn or threadbare but only stained.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a time-skip happening in this chapter, I hope you folks don’t mind. I’m sure it would be a better reading experience for this part of the story to be drawn out a bit longer, and I’m sorry I’m fast-forwarding instead. But to be honest I struggled a little bit with writer’s block on this chapter, and I’m also writing everything on my smartphone, so...I get tired to typing on a tiny little touchscreen keyboard.
> 
> Also TW for a nightmare, in which Caleb cuts off his own fingers and is also implied to be tortured. There is also graphic self harm, and (who would have guessed) more self-loathing and ableism. And just to be extra careful, Veth suffers an implied miscarriage in this chapter, so don’t trigger ya-self. <3

Forgot had a problem.

He’d been hiding for the last stretch of lights and darks. (because he was stupid he could never keep track of how many. He’d tried and tried, but the counts always vanished from him when his think was turned away). For time anyway, he’s been hiding. They’d put him in a new cage—Not-Hurt-Yet and the Quiet-Man she seemed to like so much. Was it a cage? He hadn’t tried to leave yet, and it was nicer than his old cages at least, so he couldn’t really tell. There was a soft lie-down to rest on, and the cage had box-images on the walls.

That didn’t make him any less feeling-afraid of the whole place. Forgot had taken all the soft-things off the lie-down, and built a hiding place underneath it. He’d learned not to trust the lie-downs. They left you exposed, and if you were in the open peoples could grab you. It was safer underneath, in the dark and corners, where you were hard to reach.

During the light times Not-Hurt-Yet would come make speak at him on the other side of the cage’s enter-exit, and open it to thrust eats inside. He always curled up in his shelter as soon as he heard her walk-steps. But she never came after him, and that wasn’t like his old cages either. And the eats too. That was another thing he couldn’t figure out whether to like or be afraid of. Because she fed him better than the white-carers, and better than the thrown out eats he’d managed to scavenge for himself. Not-Hurt-Yet’s eating-things were appetizing to his taste, and didn’t make his middle sick and sour. That wasn’t like cages either.

Still he’d been hiding, and now he had a problem.

The problem happened because the cage he’d been given had no place for waste. In the outside, Forgot left his waste where he’d needed to make it, and in the white-prison his cage had a smelly carrier for putting his filth in. This nicer-cage had no such obvious place to relieve himself, and he’d resorted to a water-holder with flower-images on its sides to keep from making his cage dirty anywhere else.

It worked, for a little. But that didn’t really take care of it. In the white-prison his Master’s-carers would take away the dirty-pot so it was empty when it came back. But his makeshift waste-holder was just getting full.

And Not-Hurt-Yet noticed.

Forgot was already hiding under the lie-down when she came in. All the tension of fearful-feels and unknowing that had slowly been easing the longer he was left safe and alone was tightening back to an inside-screaming. Curling himself up did what little it could in protecting him from hurts, but it was still not enough. Master’s people always won in the end.

“Hey uh...Can I just check in for a sec here?” Her thin, reedy speaking came, and he watched her feet walking around in the open beyond his hiding place. “If I’m being honest it really kinda smells in here, and I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it’s not good to just stay in one room all day. So I thought I’d just take a look round.”

Lots of meaning-sounds. Forgot wished again—he had this wish a lot—that he could understand them.

Not-Hurt-Yet had come to his waste-holder. Her speaking stopped, and he watched her stand there, doing nothing. The quiet hurt.

“Shit.”

Her hand picked it up, and Forgot was shivering. Even without smart-thinking, he was pretty sure he was in trouble. And being in trouble meant punishment. Every thud of her walking made his heartbeating trip, stuttering with panic and uncertainty. Then she looked under the lie-down, and their eyes met.

Forgot was wide-eyed with terror, but Not-Hurt-Yet looked less angry than he’d been expecting. Almost...pitying instead. She was looking sorry for him. No speaking came. She just looked at him, and he huddled in a ball looking at her, and they both were so quiet waiting.

“Come out please.” Her speaking sounds were shockingly gentle, and she made a summoning gesture. It was so nice it sounded like a trick. “I’ll show ya where the outhouse is. You don’t have to use a pitcher.”

He shouldn’t trust it. She sounded too good. Too nice when he’d just been caught doing something bad. If he came close like she wanted, she’d turn bad and punish him.

“I won’t hurt ya. I promised I wouldn’t.”

She backed away suddenly, and crouched down farther off, so they were still seeing each other, but not so close. Even that made Forgot soften in spite of himself. It wasn’t so frightening when she was far away. Too far to hit him easily. “Come on,” she made speak coaxingly, with that gesture again. “You can come out, it’s all right.”

Barely persuaded to move, Forgot crawled a little forward. Just enough to be good for her, without being in easy reach. It was like in the dark-cage all over again. She inched along. Never close enough to frighten, never far enough to be ignored. Just enough to make it clear that she wanted to lead him, without forcing him to go anywhere.

What was this play-follow-game?! Peoples never did this!

All the way to the enter-exit of his cage. Then they were beyond, moving into the rest of Not-Hurt-Yet’s shelter-place. It was all as different from the white-prison, just like his new cage was. Everything was small like Not-Hurt-Yet and Quiet-Man so that even on his hands and knees the things around him were disarmingly small. Bright box-images on the walls, lots of colors, light coming in everywhere, it was all so different from his white-prison. And it wasn’t the same, but it was exactly alike; in his memory-images, Home felt just like this...

Not-Hurt-Yet led him all the way to another enter-exit in the cooking-room, and out past that. There was a little fenced in green-place, behind Not-Hurt-Yet and Quiet-Man’s shelter-home, and she led him across it to a little-shelter. It was only big enough for one person to stand in, and she opened it to show him inside. There was a hole in the shelter-box, and she pointed at it significantly.

“This is where you put it.”

He watched her dump his filth down the hole.

Oh.

Forgot had never felt grateful to one of the smarter-peoples before. Docile, conciliatory, tolerant, maybe. But the rush of elated wonder at being given this clean way to take care of himself was a new, giddy sensation that made him incautious. He smiled with pleasure before he could stop himself, and a keening hum of delight slipped out of himself, before he could remember that smart-people wanted speaking. Not the stupid-sounds which was all Forgot could make.

But before Forgot could feel more than one flash of fear through his think, Not-Hurt-Yet smiled with teeth showing like the sounds made her happy.

“Yeah there ya go, I’m nothing to be afraid of, see?”

The noises she was making sounded good, but Forgot was back to being careful and searched her expression watchfully. After a long search Forgot nudged forward again. It wasn’t quite in a straight line; he stepped carefully, half out and half to the side, so that he still wasn’t too close. But Not-Hurt-Yet matched and yielded to his movement until Forgot was close enough to look down the hole she’d showed him.

Waste went in. That was good. He liked that.

Finally Forgot finished looking, and turned back to look at Not-Hurt-Yet.

“Done pondering the mysteries of life?” She made a sharp sort of smile about her teeth, like it was a joke he didn’t know about. “No more piss in my Aunt Bettina’s pitcher?”

When he didn’t speak anything she gestured again. “Come on, lets take you in the kitchen where I can keep an eye on you.”

***

After almost a month Veth still didn’t know what to think of their houseguest.

The boy was a complete mystery. He still had yet to say a word, or respond to speech like he could understand a single thing they were saying. Yeza had tried to subtly inquire about him, but none of his searches turned up any stones. Their only resources were the one bookstore in town and the local schoolhouse, so that wasn’t saying much, but still.

Neither Veth nor Yeza knew how to speak any other language than Halfling, but they’d tried that, just to make sure he wasn’t fluent, and he’d responded just as ignorantly as when they tried to converse with him in Common. It wasn’t even like the lack of speech in little children. Even babies knew how to recognize that their parents were ‘mama’ or ‘papa.’ But so far the human seemed to have either a complete disregard, or a complete inability to grasp the connection between a repetitive sound and the object it referred to.

He couldn’t just be deaf. He responded to noises, and always showed an awareness of her when she was talking. It wasn’t that he was untaught, or just learning Common. Because once again, even someone who was completely ignorant of a language should show signs of starting to recognize repetitive words. But with him the words never came.

Another thing that took a while to notice, but was unmistakable once you did, was his perceptiveness. While this strange, wild boy never seemed to have the least idea what they were talking about, he seemed incredibly insightful to the emotions behind what they said. He appeared pleased by the sound of her voice when she was a good mood, and the deep distrust that had been so prevalent in him at first would almost disappear in times like these. But when she showed even the least sign of displeasure, hell even when she was going through what Yeza called Shark Week and was more snappish than usual, the poor boy was so wary of her it was almost painful. He’d also seemed to cotton on to the fact that she and Yeza were married, too. When she was getting harassed by a particularly stubborn customer in the shop, suddenly he would be there, mutely leading Yeza along by the sleeve. And when either of them went beyond some nebulous point in their kisses during the evening, suddenly he was slipping away just when they wanted privacy.

It was strange.

“Maybe he was raised by wolves,” Veth said playfully, while Yeza was mixing chemicals. “Like that kid’s-story the Jungle Book or whatever.

“I don’t think he was raised by wolves.” Yeza laughed. “He’d be barking at us or something if he was. Now could you pass me—thank you—“

“Maybe he’s not human.” Veth said another time, watching their guest from the other side of the room.

One of Veth’s collections was an array of crystal pendants hanging up in the sitting-room window that refracted rainbows through the room on sunny mornings when she opened the curtains, and the boy had been sitting there gazing in complete fascination at the prisms for almost an hour without any sign of boredom. At Veth’s suggestion Yeza gave her a startled look.

“Y’know, like a fey or something.” Veth said when she saw him looking.

“Aren’t fey all about luring humans into their realms with favors or whatever, not the other way around?”

“That’s demons, Yezzy dear.”

“No I’m pretty sure that’s the fey.”

“I think he was abused.” Veth murmured somberly in the dark, after the beggar had retreated to his room, and she was sitting with Yeza by the fire.

“Probably,” Yeza agreed, his voice gentle but heavy.

It had been a horrible day. The crownsguard had come to pick up an order of healing potions, and the human’s stark terror had been palpable. He’d hardly been able to look at Veth the rest of the afternoon, clinging to corners with his hands behind his back, and cringing whenever she walked in his direction. The temptation of dinner had made things a little better, as the offering of stew coaxed him from the corner. But he’d still refused to join them at the table, and ate sitting on the floor instead.

“Do you think he was locked up or something?” Veth asked, trying to put a jesting veneer over her morbid curiosity.

Yeza was just looking at the fire with her hand clasped between both his own.

“Maybe he was abandoned by his parents.”

Yeza made a small humming noise, beating her hand gently against his leg.

“Or maybe they were just shitty fucking people, and chained him up in a basement his whole life.”

“Hush.” Her husband remonstrated gently, chafing her fingers between both his own.

Veth sniffled, a dark tear-stain blotting the fabric on her skirt.

“I doubt we’ll ever know.” Yeza said in a somber voice, while she sat listening with her head bowed. “For whatever reason, he’s unable to tell us. And whoever did this is long gone. All we can do is try to make him trust us, and help as best we can _now_.”

“I just hate not knowing.”

“Would it make it any better? If you did know for sure?”

Veth didn’t answer.

Not all of the discoveries were bad. Another thing that became apparent with time was that the boy loved puzzles. Veth figured it out when she was in the middle of mixing a three bean salad in the kitchen. He was watching her, while she rinsed the beans which had been soaking overnight, and she put them on the table while she went to fetch more ingredients from the pantry. She had the bundles in her arms when she came back, and then stopped.

The boy was sitting hunched at the table, halfway though picking over the beans. He had three distinct groups, arranged by type, and as Veth watched he kept rapidly adding more. In a constant shifting pattern he moved the beans around in a way that seemed random, but he apparently understood.

Confused but interested, Veth tried to tiptoe forward quietly enough that she wouldn’t disturb him. She needn’t have bothered though. The boy seemed so focused he didn’t even notice her standing over him on the other side of the table. A tiny smile was flitting about his mouth, and the usual hesitation that constantly shrouded him in a thick aura was gone. All in one moment he looked confident, and interested, and Veth almost wanted to say he looked happy.

Then she looked at what he was doing.

The beans, which she’d had mixed together, were now separated into neat orderly rows. Not just in straight lines, but also by size, so that each set of beans cascaded from largest to smallest. Even when they were similar sizes, he’d seemingly picked out the correct hierarchy, so that Veth was looking down on hundreds of beans cataloged in perfect symmetry. It was the strangest, most incredible thing she’d ever seen.

“That’s pretty cool.” Veth said softly, pointing at the beans.

The beggar darted a look at her, with a tiny flashing little grin, then went back to studying the beans. He’d arranged them all by now, so there were three rectangles of beans, and was drumming his fingers on the table while he looked at them.

“Can I touch ‘em?” Veth asked, reaching out to hold her hand an inch away from the closest set.

The beggar boy went stock still, watching her hand with rigid attention. A little afraid of frightening him, but curious all the same, Veth moved one of the beans out of place. Instantly he reached out and nudged it back. She did it again, with another bean, and he corrected her in the same way. She shuffled the positioning of a small group, and he lined them up again. Veth didn’t have a perfect memory, but the surety of his response certainly made it seem like he was recreating the exact same arrangement, every time.

“How are you doing that?” Veth asked herself with a small, pleased smile of intrigue.

With a sweep of her hand she pushed all the beans together again, obliterating the whole display. And the boy whimpered. His entire body jerked in her direction, like it physically irritated him to have the order he’d created reduced to nothing. Veth gestured at the beans, trying to make her action seem friendly in retrospect. “Show me again.”

He seemed less confident this time, glancing at her warily as he reached out toward the beans. But when no negative reaction came, he quickly slipped into the same trance of focus as before, hands moving in a frenzy of motion until the same rectangle shapes appeared, beans once more separated and sized in perfect neatness. With a last nudge, slightly correcting a misplaced bean that Veth hadn’t even noticed was crooked, he fell still again, drumming his fingers on the table.

“You did it!” Veth burst out, grinning with excitement. “You did it again! You’re amazing!”

The human jumped at the sudden noise, but seemed pleased by whatever approval he saw in her face. He ducked his head, a tiny smile buttoned behind his lower lip, and he rocked gently in his seat. Veth still had the three bean salad to make, but she’d forgotten it in the wake of this new discovery, and abandoned the task in favor of testing him further.

The rest of the afternoon was spent devising every type of challenge she could think of. In rapid succession Veth discovered that her strange ward was equally adept at untangling balls of string, piecing together a puzzle nicknack she’d collected, and drawing a line from one side of a maze to the other. She found him able to tell things apart by size, color, texture, and even weight. He could even put together a jigsaw puzzle in rapid time, laying the pieces down with a certainty that made it look like he’d memorized some nebulous order, and was rebuilding the puzzle from rote.

His strange capabilities weren’t without their limits however, which Veth soon discovered, and he seemed increasingly frustrated by the longer she challenged him and he failed. The boy’s pattern recognition was flawless, but only while the immediate object or example was before him. When she tried to test his memory, or the extent of his ability to recall things with clarity, he couldn’t do it. When she beat a specific pattern of knocks on the table, he couldn’t echo it. When she tried to demonstrate a certain ordering of seemingly identical objects, which were mixed so he could repeat the order, he couldn’t recreate the scheme she’d demonstrated for him.

Veth was in the middle of trying to hum certain notes for him to repeat when he finally snapped. He ripped away from their game with a wail, fingernails clawing at his cheeks, as he doubled over to strike his forehead viciously against the table. It was so sudden that it made Veth jump. Then guilt and alarm both rose up in her at once, stumbling off her kitchen chair to undo the effects of her meddling.

Shushing hurriedly through her teeth she gripped his shoulders, dragging him back from the table so he couldn’t keep braining himself. He fought her with a panicky sob, hands rising to wrench at his hair, as if he could yank his skull out. For a moment they were both flailing, then Veth emerged on top while she held his arms safely inert.

The boy wailed once he was still. A sound so full of misery and distress, Veth’s own eyes blurred from listening to it. Still shushing, she allowed his larger body to guide them both into movement, rocking back and forth at the kitchen table, incessant and monotonous until the sway had become a trance and he was finally calming down. He was still breathing wetly, but the frenzy had given way to calm, and Veth relaxed her hold on him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, though he was just as speechless as ever. “We won’t do that again. You don’t have to try anymore.”

Veth fully intended for that to be the end of it. But the very next morning she found the boy in her pantry, rearranging all her dry ingredients by color and size. The new organization left nothing arranged by type—the cornmeal and flour were in completely different spots, the canned vegetables were no longer grouped together, and so forth—but it was neatly contrived in its own way. She didn’t have the heart to change it back.

***

He was sitting in Nice-Veth’s shelter-home, and there were words before him, but he couldn’t read them. The shapes he should know. There were sounds this meant. But it swam before his vision and he tried to hold them still with a hand on the page. Ink swirled around him, crawling up his arms with lines of black, and he tried to shake them off.

The action became a big shiny-sharp in his hand. It was heavy, and he lifted it, and there were word-pages on a cutting-board. He had to cut them up. His hand was there when he brought the knife down, and he cut into it, lopping off fingers. They rolled across the cutting-board and he chopped more. More. More.

He was cutting crystals now. They tinkled as they fell away from his hand while he cut them off. But he still had to read the words somewhere. He was wasting time here, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the words he had to find, even while he was cutting. The words were important. He shouldn’t be doing this. The words were going to get burned up if he didn’t dig a hole in them.

There was pain in his head. He turned to find it, and Nice-Veth was there. He no longer had a sharp. The metal in his hand was green glass, so hefty his fingers didn’t meet around it, and he struck at her with it.

Master hit him instead. He shied away with a sob, shielding his head from the blow that had fallen. Another fell, and he staggered to his knees, weeping bitterly, full of fears and hurting. Holding a crystal in each hand he groped toward Master’s boot, cowering down to worship it. He had to make Master happy. Had to please him, so he’d leave him alone.

But he couldn’t move. He was pinned on the ground. Master was big and powerful, in control, and angry at everything. It was a table now. He thrashed against restraints, and shouted around a thing in his mouth. He knew this part. The part where he couldn’t get out. Master was _evil_ , and he couldn’t get away. He wanted mercy. If only he’d be forgiven.

This was real. It was happening. He wasn’t dreaming right now. He wasn’t just going to wake up. Master was cutting into the nape of his neck. A hot line of fire up the back of his skull. Master was going to put torture-glass and words into the gash on his neck. It wasn’t a nightmare, because the nightmare was real, and it was inescapable. He was helpless. Exposed. Vulnerable.

Defenseless.

Unprotected.

_Weak_.

Forgot was still screaming as he woke up; still sobbing and trembling from the terrible impression of powerlessness. The scorching clutch of being stripped naked, unable to resist or even defend himself. It made him loud, and incautious, choking on more tears than his seeing had room for at once. It made him stupid.

He remembered himself too late, cutting off his distressed noises with a whimper of fear, a hand over his mouth to hold in the weakness-sounds that wanted to escape. He’d been loud. Annoying. They’d know he was sleeping things he shouldn’t. He gripped his mouth tighter, trying to strangle out even more unhappy noises of fear. They’d find him! Stupid! Why couldn’t he make him quiet?!

It was all mixing up. His head still hurt. In fact it burned. He could feel Master’s hands. Forgot bucked in place, whipping around to try and catch the bad man there. But Master moved too, so he wasn’t where Forgot could see him, and he couldn’t cry out, because they’d hear him. A moan slipped, in spite of his futile attempts to keep it down. The hands were still there. He could feel the torture-glass Master had put in his neck, and Forgot scratched at it, trying to fish it out.

That brought pain. And the pain was good, because it shrank everything. He knew where the green was. Master had put it in after all. Forgot could take it out, he just had to be strong about it. He scratched deeper. And the pain hurt more, but his whimpers and crying didn’t matter, because the hurt was still good. It made him clean. He was getting better like this. If he could just be strong enough, he could fix himself.

But he’d been too loud. He didn’t even notice the enter-exit making a noise as it moved, but he saw the light of a little-burning at the edge of his vision. There was someone making talk sounds, but he couldn’t pay attention because the hurting was getting too big to feel anything else now. He had to keep doing it, or it would stop being pleasant, and he ignored all other intrusive sensations. He was fixing himself right now. He couldn’t allow stupid, outside-distractions to make him falter. Master hated hesitation.

It was Nice-Veth, and Forgot cringed away as she touched him. She shouldn’t be here. She was distracting him. Nice-Veth tried to touch his hands, and Forgot wrenched away with a growl. “Is that blood?!?” She was so annoying. “No! Hey! Stop it!” She was trying to trap him, arms around his shoulders, invading his space. Forgot wailed, full of angry and terror feelings both at once. She was too close! And he didn’t like it. _Go away_.

Her arms locked around his shoulders, and the terror feels won out. She was touching him. Squeezing him. Forgot fought back with all his strength, thrashing against her to make her let him go. She had to let go. All her body touching him was awful, like it made his skin crawl around where it shouldn’t be, filling him with hot-chills that itched. Forgot shoved her away, and himself backwards, until his back hit the wall and Nice-Veth had been forced off from him. The wall was nice and hard, and Forgot shoved himself deep into it, letting it soothe his whole back from the touches-feeling, while his hands went back to the evil he needed to fix on his neck.

But Nice-Veth was back, and she wouldn’t leave his arms alone. She wrenched his hands away, and held onto them, even though Forgot tried to shake her off. And now he couldn’t know if the wall was good or bad, because it was hard and soothing, but also kept him from anywhere to go away from Nice-Veth. He could only press himself against it, and turn his face as far away as possible from her, so it sort of felt like she wasn’t there.

For a long, silent waiting, Forgot trembled and shook himself back down from urgent distress into a numb surrender. And Nice-Veth just sat with their fingers laced together. When he was finally breathing quiet Nice-Veth let go of his arms and Forgot drew them back to hold himself, too cold and adrift-feeling now that she’d released him, and his fixation was over.

“There ya go. That’s better.” Nice-Veth’s talking-sounds struck him as soothing and pleasant now that he wasn’t hearing her through a screaming-inside. “Had a nightmare I’m guessing...and a real shitty one at that.”

Nice-Veth sat looking at him, and Forgot held very still while she did, trying not to even breathe. There was a creeping foolish-feel coming over him now, and he felt stupid-childish for making so much upset when he should have been calm and good for her. He hugged around it, cold and ugly in his chest, keeping his face averted so she wouldn’t see his guilt.

“Well! There’s only one thing to do when we have nightmares and bad dreams...find something good to eat.”

Forgot sat huddled while she left him, uncertain whether he wanted her to go. Sometimes she was nice to him when he was like this, and it was good, even if he didn’t deserve it. Other peoples would have punished him for so much bothering them, but Veth was always strange and wrong about his badness. She wasn’t away for long, and when she came back through the enter-exit Forgot caught himself being happy to see her. That was stupid, and he made himself hide it.

“Here ya go. Just a little midnight snack, to cheer ya up.” Nice-Veth had a little round baked-eat with red-mash on it, and she gave it to him, making him blink with confusion-feels at the gift. “Now you nibble on that, and we’ll see about your poor neck.”

She climbed up to stand next to him on the lie-down because she was so little and she tugged him close to look at his scratches. Forgot flinched and stiffened, expecting pains, but she was very gentle and soothing.

“My mother always used to say our mind gives us nightmares because really, it needs something—like a drink of water, or to piss, ya know? And that’s our body’s way of waking us up.” She had a little box with her, and she opened it, to show all kinds of little clean-things inside, and she began fingering through them, still making talk. “So now whenever I have a bad dream, I just tell myself to find whatever it is my mind woke me up to do, and then I go do it. You shouldn’t brood after a nightmare you know? It ruins the rest of your nice sleep. I know you can’t understand a fucking thing I’m saying right now, but it keeps you from brooding to listen to me, so I’m gonna keep talking you through it...”

Her word-sounds—hushed and full of sympathy—washed over him, while he began nibbling at the sweet-eat, and she began pulling out medicine-things and stingy-stuffs to make his hurt skin better. It was sweet, and she was warm, and close but not touching like it made his skin crawl to be. Her talk-sounds, and the little-burning-light, and this baked-thing he was eating, were all soft and home-full, and perfectly different from the cold defenseless feeling. It made Master seem far away, and longer-ago, and too quiet to bother him here.

It was nice.

This was nice.

Nobody ever did this. Gave him tasty-things, and dabbed at his hurting skin in a way that didn’t make it worse. Master’s people, the white-carers, didn’t like when he hurt himself either, and they also cleaned him up. But it wasn’t nice. They were rough, and angry at him for before, and made him want to cringe and squirm from their persistent awful-touching. Nothing was nice like this. Only Mutter-Mother, who was gone and burned-dead.

Veth-Like-Mother was so nice.

Forgot was making himself cry, and he sniffled as the tears began slipping out. He shouldn’t be weak enough to cry, but just like the rest of Veth’s niceness, Veth-Mother didn’t hate him. She just made especially soothing speak-sounds—“there ya go...that’s it...let it all out...”—and paused to pat his shoulder for a moment. Then she went right back to fixing him, and didn’t mind that he couldn’t stop sniffing, and that he was getting tears on her good-eats.

She was perfect like that.

When she let him go, all his pain was gone, and Forgot was quite sure he wasn’t ready now. He didn’t want her to go yet. When she tried to move away, Forgot grabbed her hand, where it was hanging in the edge of his seeing, and he pulled her close again. His boldness made her jump, but she didn’t strike him for touching her, wasn’t angry for being made to do what he wanted, and she just went still in his hand.

He didn’t quite know what to do now. Veth-Mother liked lots of touches. She was always putting her arms and mouth on her husband-mate, and Forgot knew that was because she loved him. But he wasn’t good at that. All the holding and mouth-touching. It just felt itchy.

But he had no real-words to thank her. To make her see how she was Good-Better. She had to know he was loving-her, but he couldn’t make her see. He stared at her hand, brooding on the problem, and Veth-Mother was being waited far too long. He should do something.

Really, he wanted to put her hand on his face, and hold it there. Rub his cheek on it and feel the texture of her skin, how warm and soft it was. But that was far-too-much-too-close. He couldn’t do that. She was too good to look at, and so he couldn’t raise his head either. Finally, after faltering for a moment, he decided on leaning forward until his rumpled, sagging head was almost touching her chest.

For a moment she raised her arm to move toward him, like she thought he was asking for an arm-hold. But he couldn’t sit still for that, and gently cringed away, tilting his head as far from it as possible. And she let him. No forcing him to touch her way, she just went still again, and he was sure nothing in Everything could contain how grateful he was to her. But he had no words for that. So he just sighed, shoulders dropping in relief, and nosed back into the almost-lean against her again.

This was good. He liked this. He was sharing her heat, and he could hear her breathing just inches away from his face. They weren’t touching anywhere, but he could feel with every bit of his body how close he was holding himself to her. She didn’t try to touch him again, and it meant he could feel her as long as he wanted with perfect safety.

She had some complicated look on her face when he sat up again. He didn’t know how to look at her, now that he’d done something so vulnerable for her, and he jerkily scooted back, as if he was going to sleep again. Veth-Mother didn’t make any more speak, and she left him very quietly. She turned to look back in the enter-exit, and when she met his eyes watching her, she smiled big-wide with teeth showing, and shut the enter-exit still looking at him.

***

They were quiet all the way back to the house.

Veth didn’t want to be quiet. She wanted to scream. Wanted the world to burn. Wanted every single person in it to hear her pain, down to the last ounce of it, and scream from hearing it. She felt cruel, and cold, and brutal.

She felt like death and dying.

Every time she looked over at Yeza he had the same white, scared look on his face. Like he was walking arm in arm with a tiger. Arm in arm with a ticking bomb that was about to go off. Arm in arm with a figure made of fragile glass.

Arm in arm with a grieving almost-mother, who was ten seconds away from breaking.

Veth hated it. She hated the look on his face. She hated the hunch in his shoulders. She hated the silence, and she hated the noise, and she hated hating him most of all.

It wasn’t his fault and she knew it. It wasn’t his fault and she was blaming him anyway. The world was inanimate, and the gods were too far away to care; their legion of enemies and scoffers too swollen for Veth’s tiny agony to stab and wound them anyways. And with only Yeza close, it was only Yeza to blame, because being angered by him felt better than being deprived by nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

“ _Mrs. Brennato_...”

She’d known before they said it. Before they said anything. Before they’d even come to know for sure. Well that wasn’t true, but it felt that way when she remembered their eyes. Like she’d known all along.

“ _We lost them_...”

The shop bell jingled just like it always did when Yeza opened the door for her. She started stripping off her coat, not really knowing what she was doing, and she automatically processed Yeza doing so as well in the corner of her eye. She hung her coat on the hook. She kicked the winter slush off her boots. She walked toward somewhere. Anywhere. She didn’t care where.

“ _I’m so sorry_...”

Caleb looked up when she came into the family room, Yeza dogging her footsteps. For an instant she saw his scruffy face light up with single-hearted pleasure at her arrival home, then it clouded over in an instant with grave stillness, as if he knew everything by whatever he saw on her face. She walked past him, wishing she could stop seeing his look. That she could forget him, everything else, and most of all the gloom she was throwing over him without meaning to. That she didn’t have to see his face close into itself, like a composed study in nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

“Veth.”

Yeza was hovering in her peripheral vision, and she wanted to not look at him. She could tell he was worried, even though she was refusing to see his face. He kept shifting his feet, and he cleared his throat before speaking again.

“Do you want any dinner? I could bring something up from the kitchen? Or maybe just some tea, if you’re not feeling up to it?”

“Go away, Yeza.” She said. Her voice cold, and controlled, and full of nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

She didn’t know what made her blink back to awareness after the next stretch of unmeaning. Yeza had vanished from her side, and she still seemed to be alone now at first glance. But sitting on the window-seat in front of her was a little copper flower. It was fashioned out of a bit of wire, crimped and twisted into five loops for petals, and a spiral for the button center.

Caleb.

When she looked to the side, he was perched next to her on the window-seat, looking out into the room instead of at her. He tilted his face further away as her eyes landed on him, fully averting his gaze so she could only see a bit of his ear and the back of his head. For a moment he rocked in place, half bouncing like he almost wanted to get up, but couldn’t quite commit to the movement. Then he leaned over hard into her space, shoving their shoulders together, and laying his head in the crook of her neck.

No hugging, no hand offered for her to hold it, just leaning on each other.

Veth sniffled and blinked, while her vision blurred. And it wasn’t from spacing out this time, as she felt a hot tear land on her thumb that held the wire flower. She felt like shit. Caleb gave a low hum, and leaned harder into her shoulder. Somehow having to fight his weight was as comforting as something more cuddly would have been.

***

“I’m naming him Caleb,” Veth told Yeza over dinner, the night after her boy’s nightmare, when he’d almost hugged her.

Yeza was sitting on the other side of the table, and Caleb was sitting on the floor because the chairs were too small for him. Both men had been eating when Veth made her announcement, but only Yeza’s hands stilled. The brand-new Caleb, oblivious to their conversation, went right on eating, using chunks of bread to dip in his stew.

“He’s not Boy anymore?” Yeza asked, a little bit playfully. He’d wanted to give Caleb a name right away, just for the sake of convenience, but Veth had refused to pick something slapdash.

“No, he’s Caleb.”

“And what’s the reason, for his name being Caleb?”

“I was going to name our first baby that, if it was a boy.”

Yeza went very still, something serious but not quite on his face, and Veth looked straight back. Caleb glanced up at them, and then paused to look again, his chews slowing down until they stopped altogether. When neither of them moved in the following silence he whined softly, beginning to look apprehensive. It broke the tension somehow, and Yeza nodded jerkily.

“Alright,” he said in a husky voice. “Caleb it is then...”

And that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone please tell me that Caleb not knowing where to relieve himself wasn’t something that came off as crack-y. Because I was super afraid of that happening, but couldn’t find a way around it. My logic just had to demand why Caleb would ever know how to use the bathroom, or that it was safe to do so. This also didn’t happen to me, but one of my family’s friends was severely neglected and abused as a child, and was forced to make himself a bathroom similar to how Caleb does. So honestly, that seemed like the most realistic scenario. I just had to post it, hoping that no one would underestimate how seriously fucked-up that is, or think it was funny instead of sad.
> 
> My mother really did tell me the thing about nightmares when I was little, and I still follow that advice. I’m sure that’s not how nightmares are caused or function for people with ptsd like what Caleb has, but I thought it was a fun little Easter egg that no one would recognize but me. 
> 
> I based Caleb’s sensory-discomfort and what it feels like, off my own. Unlike Caleb I am a very touchy person, and finding a hug oppressive is hard for me to relate with. But dry, powdery textures—like paper towels rubbing together, or touching uncooked marshmallows—wigs my skin the _fuck_ out. So I used my own experience. Same thing with finding solid resistance on my back or arms grounding, fidgeting when I’m absorbed, and disliking eye contact. I’m pretty sure I am not actually autistic, but I think I relate on a smaller level with a lot of the same things that bother Caleb. If I’m wrong on any point, please tell me.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going with something a little lighter this go-round. So I don’t think there’s any pertinent trigger warnings? 
> 
> The only thing I can think of would be depictions of an autistic person being made uncomfortable by unwanted skin contact. Nothing major, just some slight discomfort that Veth and Yeza are both aware of and try to minimize as much as possible 
> 
> If I’ve missed something of course please leave a comment to tell me

“YEZZY!”

Yeza almost jumped out of his skin, flicking a blot of ink across the page and making several glass bottles which were hanging in a rack almost tip over, as he jostled them. The shrill call of his wife’s voice had come from above, muffled by the stairs, and Yeza glanced up at them expecting to see her appear at their bottom in a moment or so. When she didn’t come down Yeza looked back at his work, chewing his lip with a frown over the ink-spot. He was on the cusp of success with this latest experiment. Samples 7 and 8 were almost perfect, surely one more attempt would crack it. He could almost taste the solution on the tip of his tongue.

“YEZA!”

He managed not to spill the ink this time, but only by snatching his hand back with a curse, and clutching his heart in relief at the averted disaster. It seemed like this fascinating bit of potion-work would have to wait, if Veth didn’t stop startling him into blotting his notes. 

“Coming!” he shouted up the stairs. 

With a last glance of deep longing and regret at the interrupted notations he was leaving behind, Yeza sighed and carefully laid his pen down on the wiper he always kept at his workbench. (It was some unholy union between mustard yellow and muddy brown, with a YB lovingly stitched in the corner).

Only aware of the faint tightness behind his eyes now that his concentration was broken, Yeza labored up the stairs, rubbing the peak of his nose underneath his glasses to try and dispel it. Veth kept scolding him for working in low light, and Yeza could always say that he hadn’t meant to do it, with perfect sincerity. But somehow he could never remember to do more than _mean_ to light a second candle.

Veth was in the kitchen when he made it to the top of the stairs. Caleb was sitting on a chair in front of her, with an old sheet draped over his shoulders and front. She’d also retrieved her brush from upstairs, and it looked like she was trying to comb out his hair. He kept squirming and hunching forward as if he didn’t enjoy what she was doing. Or he would crane his neck round to try and look at her hands, either out of curiosity or watchfulness. At the sight of her husband, Veth immediately brightened.

“There you are!” She said, pointing her brush at Caleb. “I need you to hold him still for me.”

Obediently Yeza walked across the kitchen to take Caleb by the cheeks, and keep his face forward. The human tried to flinch back, then went still once Yeza had found a good grip. It’s the sort of pose that would make him think of romance novels, if it wasn’t such a casual situation, and wasn’t a scruffy human he’d practically adopted sitting in his grasp. Caleb gave an unhappy noise as he was restrained, looking at Yeza with a questioning look in his blue eyes. It didn’t take long for him to try and squirm again, chin jerking in Yeza’s grip as soon as Veth began brushing him again, but this time Yeza was able to hold him still and Veth tied his hair back to the nape of his neck.

“Now then...” Veth began, looking businesslike, then she paused and glanced around before saying “the fucking scissors!” And darted away to fetch her shears.

As she moved Caleb tried to rise too, looking like he intended to go along and help her with whatever he thought she was doing. But Yeza herded him back into the chair, and straightened the sheet around his shoulders again. Then Veth came back, now armed with the scissors, and retook her place behind Caleb’s back.

“Ready?” She said, looking at Yeza over Caleb’s hunchy shoulder. “Ok. Keep him real still for a sec.”

Veth held out the cropped fistful of hair when she was done, letting Caleb look at it. “There ya go. Look at all that hair you had on your head.”

When Caleb saw the hair he immediately reached out toward it, running his thumb over the uniform stubble left by Veth’s cut. Then again, and again, making the bristles fan as they bent and straightened beneath his finger. Probably he could have kept fidgeting with his cut off hair all afternoon if they let him, but Veth tossed the hair into the rubbish bin after letting Caleb have a brief feel, and he seemed to loose interest.

“Keep holding him from the back.” Veth said without bothering to look away from her work, knowing that Yeza would of course obey her.

Holding Caleb in place by a hand on each of his temples, Yeza watched Veth’s face screw in concentration while she pinched a handful of Caleb’s beard, to begin trimming it down. They only rarely cut it, since Caleb still seemed particularly averse to having his face handled much, and was completely terrified of being shaved by a razor. Even now he made a fretful, worried sound, just having Veth bring the scissors close to his face, and he tried to jerk away from both their holds. Yeza squeezed his hands gently, steering Caleb’s head forward again, and the hand Veth had around his beard followed Caleb’s movement, while her other held the scissors at a careful distance.

“Now Cay-cay. I’ve got to do this. The more you wiggle the longer it will take.”

Of course Caleb didn’t understand her, and he flinched in his seat while Veth began to bring the scissors close again. “I won’t cut ya, Lebby. I promise.” Veth said, making the entire movement of her arm exaggerated, so Caleb could (hopefully) see the clear approach of her intention, and that it wasn’t dangerous.

This time Caleb went still as a hunted deer under Veth’s hands, and the soft _snick snick_ of her work began to fill the kitchen, while overgrown puffs of facial hair rolled away down the sheet Caleb was covered with. It was sort of mesmerizing, watching Veth’s careful work, while one side of Caleb’s face seemed to shrink, then the other. Yeza always sort of forgot how wild he still looked. Even now, when fed and clothed and sheltered in their home, Caleb still only looked half-civilized most of the time. Until Veth decided it was time to cut his beard short again and the change made Yeza see him with fresh eyes.

When she was done Veth made a big show of it, telegraphing plentiful smiles and exaggerated praises for the man’s cautiously smiling gaze. Yeza retreated to the kitchen door, watching her chatter and bustle about, basking in the household affairs he usually missed out on, working in the basement.

His wife was a saint, clearly. Watching her bustle about sweeping up hair, and mothering Caleb. She was so good with him. Apparently not in the least disappointed or inconvenienced by what Yeza knew was a large burden on her time and attention. A very welcome one—gods forbid anyone ever think Veth, or Yeza for that matter, didn’t love and appreciate Caleb’s part in their lives wholeheartedly—but caring for his needs was a burden all the same.

Yeza knew that Veth’s attention was claimed even more by Caleb than he was, but she really seemed to enjoy it more than anything. He watched her present Caleb with a set of three painted porcelain animals, which would probably get added to her collection of ceramics and china on decorative shelves in the front sitting room. For now Caleb was examining them with delicate fingers. She was always doing little things like that for him. Presenting him with little gifts, doodling mazes on their scrap paper, teaching him how to pick locks, making her baked goods in little animal shapes. She really was a good mother.

When she had anything to be a mother for...

That brought a wince to Yeza’s face, pained by the thought. He knew it wasn’t his fault, but it was still hard to not feel guilty about it, or wonder if there was some unknown reason the gods had apparently decided they weren’t to have any actual children of their own. It felt shitty to think of Caleb as a placeholder too, an alternative channel for Veth’s attention, as child after child of her own miscarried, each one a failed potential. Veth never said that, or even hinted that her relationship with Caleb was anything like that, but Yeza had to wonder...What would Caleb’s presence mean, if Veth had anything else to love...

Stop it. Yeza shook himself, blinking hard to push his thoughts away. That was shitty. He shouldn’t be thinking that way. Bottom line, Veth was good for Caleb. And Caleb was good for Veth. Watching Caleb admire Veth’s porcelain animal figures, Yeza felt more pleasant again. One of the figurines was a little painted rabbit, and Caleb had placed it in front of him on the kitchen table, and was now hunching over so he was nearly eye level with it, caressing one finger down its back as if it were a real rabbit who’s fur he was petting. The motion was incredibly gentle, and made Yeza feel something ache in the center of his chest. Caleb was so peaceable sometimes, and it always made Yeza feel strangely sad.

“I’ve never seen him do that before...” Veth said appearing at Yeza’s elbow, and Yeza jumped, startled by her unexpected presence. She was watching Caleb, who was still stroking the porcelain bunny, and Yeza was now arrested more by the deep affection on her face than the snapshot of Caleb’s silent vulnerability. “D’you think he likes rabbits?”

Yeza didn’t answer, and Veth fell silent too. She stood still, watching Caleb pet the china rabbit, while Yeza watched her watch Caleb. It was a good moment. A nice picture. Yeza wanted to save a perfect memory of the warm, soft look on her face.

“I love you.” Yeza said to her.

Veth gave him a confused look, not following his train of thought, and laughed. “Ok...Love you too, bumpkin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t really have anything noteworthy to leave on this chapter, so thanks for reading. Your comments or thoughts are appreciated! Feedback is the writer’s lifeblood.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus, it’s been two weeks since I last updated and I am in mortal fear that y’all’s got bored of this fic or thought that I abandoned it. Not so! I’m back again, and bloody determined to finish this fic at a reasonable pace.

Caleb was afraid.

Something big-scary was going on. There were lots of peoples in their Home, and Nice-Yeza was worried, and Veth-Mother hadn’t come out of her sleeping-place to make good things for eating. Just cold, frightened Caleb, and cold, frightened Nice-Yeza alone in the empty cooking-place, chewing last-dark’s old-eats together.

All things had gone strange since Nice-Yeza rushed out of the place he shared with Veth-Mother, looking excited and worried, and gone out before any peoples were awake yet. He’d come back with Veth-Mother’s Special-Carer, and gone straight back into their place, looking more excited and worried. Now long times had gone by, Hot-Shine was up in the Overhead, and everything about Home was wrong. No burning in the fire-holders, no good-things for waking up, no Veth-Mother’s happy talk-sounds.

No Veth.

“Caleb, please—no—come here,” Yeza made speak, trying to catch Caleb’s hands and pull him away from where he was pacing. “Veth’ll kill me if I let you wear a hole in the carpet like this.”

Caleb let himself be pulled down to sitting when Nice-Yeza made Veth-Mother’s Called, expecting it to mean something. But Nice-Yeza had just gone back to sitting in quiet. He was no help at all. Caleb shifted restlessly, a painful-worry sound pushing out of his throat at the continued sitting still. All Master’s old cuts itched, jiggling under his arms, up his shoulders, and under the back of his neck. Caleb couldn’t hold back his fingers from beating out a drum-rhythm on his knees to quell the crawling-dirty-feeling. What he really wanted was to move, to understand, and not being able to made him rock in place, trying to soothe the caged up energy. Oh, he was deep, strong, full of craving right now.

“Caleb...” his Called, his New-Am, soaked in disappointment in Nice-Yeza’s speaking.

Nice-Yeza touched his back. Too light. Too gentle. Almost ticklish, but too distressing to be nice, and Caleb longed to cringe away from it. Aching to pull his shoulders up until they would be cleansed of the feeling. But he couldn’t do that. Shouldn’t do that. It didn’t hurt, wasn’t really mean, so he shouldn’t be this over-sensitive, and put off by it. He was just being too picky.

The confusion had made him rock harder, and Caleb realized he was being strange-bad when Nice-Yeza put another hand on Caleb’s shoulder to stop the motion. The second contact doubled his discomfort, and now Caleb wanted to shake apart and cry, or lash out to hit something. Maybe both, if it meant the ugly hate-touching-feeling would just leave him alone. But the second touch had been a message. A command. He was moving too much, fussing when he shouldn’t be.

Caleb knew he needed to stop, so he made himself stiff determined, fingers gripping into his seat to keep himself still. It didn’t work though. Caleb watched his leg begin to bounce, jumping up and down with ceaseless distress, and he exerted all of his think to try and make it stop, without success. He whined, wrenching one hand free to grip his knee, trying to pin it down when it wouldn’t obey him. But it wasn’t working He couldn’t control it. He was failing. Couldn’t Stop.

When he started to hit his rebellious leg with frustration, Nice-Yeza’s brown touch intervened, wrestling his flapping hands until they were captured and pinned. “Hey, hey, none of that. It doesn’t help.” Nice-Yeza sounded like he was trying to be soothing, calm by choice. Caleb whined in the back of his throat, helpless to make the halfling understand his hatred of failing.

“I know, Caleb. I’m no good at this either.”

This was a little better. Better than touches on his back and shoulders at least. Hands on his hands he could manage to tolerate. And with Nice-Yeza holding him down he didn’t have to worry about holding himself. The restraint made failure not his own anymore. Caleb let his head hang, breathing hard while Nice-Yeza kept his limbs pinned, gasping his way back down from agitation into stillness. When he unwound, Nice-Yeza carefully loosened his fingers, then withdrew his hands fully. In the silence Caleb breathed wetly, hiding his face, and smoothed his hands across his legs.

“Ok, let’s do something distracting shall we?” Nice-Yeza moved away in the edge of his seeing, coming back with the familiar woven-stick-bag that made Caleb exhale with eager relief. “Now what sounds good? Do you want a puzzle or some string?”

Caleb grasped the empty word-pages with shaky fingers, and Nice-Yeza let him have them while the halfling put the tangle-ball away. The small man padded back, taking the word-pages again. He took one and methodically tore one up, before dragging over the low flat-with-legs and dumping the pieces on it. Breathing shallow and careful, Caleb leaned forward letting the cottony absorption of re-arranging the pieces settle over him, as his movements became a pleasant haze.

This was fully-good. Creating order out of chaos was always good. Caleb liked making perfection. It was right, and as-it-should-be. The white-carers hadn’t ever let him make perfect things. They liked chaos, and breaking, and pushing him away. But here, things were different; Veth-Mother and Nice-Yeza always gave him things to fix, and didn’t laugh when he fixed them.

Once the torn up scraps had been rearranged in the shape of the original word-page, Nice-Yeza made him another pile of pieces and Caleb solved them the same way. It was satisfying, and distracting, especially when Nice-Yeza ripped them up unusually small and it took Caleb a little longer to put all the little scraps where he could see they were meant to go. Celeb liked this game because it almost felt like knowing again, having his lost, forgotten thinks back. There used to be more, and he knew there were big parts of him missing, but this made him feel closer to the smart-self who’s Called he Forgot. Before he Failed.

He’d just finished another ripped up square when there came a scream from where Veth-Mother was. A danger noise. A hurting-animal noise. It was Veth-Mother’s voice, making the high, tearing sound, and fearful-panic-pain clenched in Caleb’s middle at the sound of it. She was still making it, crying from hurt somewhere, and Caleb staggered from his seat.

“Caleb—“

He had to get to her. Had to help. She was making sounds like she was in danger, and that was bad-bad-bad. Veth-Mother couldn’t be in danger hurting. Caleb wouldn’t allow it. He lunged at the enter-exit where the peoples were, throwing his shoulder against it in his hurry, and making it shake in its frame. Nice-Yeza was coming behind him now, making speak-sounds to try and distract him, but Caleb wouldn’t listen. He couldn’t let himself be sat down right now. There were more important things.

The enter-exit opened under his wrenching fingers, forcing open the unlock-lock, and he shoved his way toward the chaos inside. There were lots of people everywhere, trying to rush in and grapple him, more around the lie down where Veth-Mother was. And they were making her hurt. There was iron-red on them, and on Veth-Mother, and on the soft-things she was lying in.

Caleb snarled, full of wordless enmity, bristling at the sight of their wrongs. They were trying to grab and push him down, or out, or anything that was away from Veth-Mother and Caleb fought back as ferociously as he could. One of them yelped, staggering away with red-iron coming out his nose from Caleb’s knuckles, and the other two were shouting. Somewhere in the din Nice-Yeza was trying to get control of him too—baselessly defensive of these bad-strangers hurting his wife-mate—and Caleb couldn’t think what to do with his betrayal but fight back against it.

Then Veth-Mother’s speaking riveted his attention, making him whip in her direction. “Caleb! Stop. No. Let him in. Let him come over.” The unfriendly hands around him suddenly relaxed, and Caleb was free to dart towards her, possessively griping the hand she held out towards him. He dropped to his knees beside the lie-down, glaring at the room with hostile protectiveness.

“Hey...” Veth-Mother made speak, trying to tug his attention back toward her by wiggling the hand he was clutching in both his own. “Hey Lebby. Look at me ok? I’m ok. Everything’s just fine. I’m alright, see?”

Caleb watched her mouth move as the speak sounds came out, more focused on the smile she was giving him than the complicated talk-words he was too stupid to understand anymore. She looked a little sick, and sweaty, and her eyes were tired. But she was smiling? Calm? Not frightened anymore. He didn’t know where all her screaming hurt went, or why she wasn’t more afraid, after having felt it. This was confusing. It made him wish he could think.

He often wished that.

One of the strangers took a step towards Veth-Mother, and Caleb snarled at them, trying to be as clear as he could be without speak-words. _Touch her, and you hurt for it._

“No. No. Caleb, listen,” Veth-Mother held out an arm to restrain him, with a patient-teacher face. “Ella’s nice. She’s a good person. See? Ella, come closer, real gently.”

The woman shuffled closer, looking uncertain, but obedient as Veth-Mother waved a hand to call her. Nervous-feels rose in Caleb’s throat as she got closer, fretting skittishly as Veth-Mother held him back. But no bad thing happened, and slowly the strangers began moving around again without Veth-Mother telling them to stop, and Caleb began to be sure that whatever danger had happened was over. Nice-Yeza had come in too, and he took a similar station on the other side of the lie down, taking one of his wife-mate’s hands like Caleb had done.

“Well?” He looked at her with big love-feeling eyes.

“Fuckin’ terrible.” Veth-Mother grumped. “This kid better be a goddamn angel from the gods, because they’re pitching a fucking fit about getting here. I hate them already.”

“You don’t really hate the baby, dear.”

“Fuck you, Yeza.”

The female at the end of the lie-down made a laughing-sound, and Nice-Yeza grinned at his wife-mate, pleased by whatever her speak-sounds had meant. Caleb didn’t know what was happening, but apparently Veth-Mother wasn’t worried about it. So Caleb decided he wouldn’t worry either. Veth-Mother was smarter anyway. Much better at understanding things than he was, with his own stupid broken-think.

It was hard though. Everyone was very busy about something he couldn’t understand, and Veth-Mother was in pain again. She would hiss through her teeth, and squeeze his hand so hard it made his bones hurt. He wanted to push away the people who were making her hurt, but Veth-Mother had yanked his hand back, making irritated speaking. “Caleb, I swear to the gods, you are not going to attack my midwife!”

He settled for hovering anxiously over her, keeping an avid watch of her face. If it ever seemed like she was dying-hurt he had to be ready. Veth-Mother tossed on the bed, seeming hurt and angry by turns, making lots of angry speak-words when she wasn’t crying out in hurts. It turned into a cycle that repeated over and over.

Veth-Mother would be still, and tired, and panting. And Caleb would try to make nice soothe-sounds like what vague memory-images of Mutter-Mother sounded like when Little-Forgot was hurting. He would make the soothing-sounds, and put all the soft-covers around her straight if she’d jostled them loose. Then Veth-Mother would go into another round of trying-not-to-screaming, and Caleb would go into it with her. She would always squeeze his hand, and Caleb would always squeeze her back, determined to tell her he felt it. She had to know he was hurting-angry too. They were same. She was loved-admired, Veth-Mother-Perfect, and Caleb had to make her know that her pain was his, because of that. He was her give-anything, go-anywhere, I-Am-Caleb.

Her squeezing made his hand go numb, the feeling leaving his fingers until they were cramped around hers without him thinking it. The pain got sharper, and Caleb leaned closer, and Veth-Mother’s cries just got louder. Until she was making a long shriek of agonized concentration, and Caleb squeezed her until his knuckles were white. The strange women were making encouraging sounds, in a flurry of movement, but Caleb couldn’t pay attention to them all. He could only hold on to Veth-Mother and watch her face, looking for signs of weakness and dying, which he had to detect and prevent. She had to live. He needed her to.

Then a gasp, Veth-Mother fell back, limp and panting, and a strange wailing little voice filled the room.

Caleb glanced around in confusion, even distracted from his guarding by the unexpected noise, which had come into the room. What was that? He’d never heard it before. But something strong, and old, and deep inside leapt at the sound, and he knew without knowing. This was a perfect-precious sound.

“It’s a boy.” The gray-haired special-carer who’d been taking care of Veth-Mother made cooing noises, lifting up a tiny little bundle of screaming anger. “Look at his wee little face! What an angel.” The helpless animal was still just wailing lustily, and the special-carer just continued to make encouraging sounds, bouncing the unhappy being that paid her no attention. “Oh, yes. Tell me all about it, little man. Yes, yes, there’s so much to say, I’m sure. Oh, yes.”

“Yezzy...” Veth-Mother sounded tired, giving her husband-mate a weak shove toward the end of the lie down.

The man stumbled over, looking wide eyed and confused, holding out stiff hands toward the wailing little creature as if he didn’t know quite what to do with himself or it. The special-carer started making lots of speak-sounds, pushing Nice-Yeza’s hands around, and doing mysterious things to the little animal. But Caleb turned his attention again, choosing not to listen when there was so much he couldn’t comprehend, and he focused on Veth-Mother again.

She looked quiet but happy now. Sitting very still, and breathing slowly. She smiled weakly when he hummed at her. “I’m alright...Thank you though.” She patted the soft-covers by his elbow, showing her affection to him through them. “You were a very good support there. It was nice to have you here.” Caleb smiled at the hand she was touching the soft-covers with, and patted close to her shoulder in return.

“Alright, here’s the mama,” the special-carer came swooping in, making Caleb and Veth-Mother’s moment be over, as she deposited a tightly wrapped bundle of cloth into Veth-Mother’s arms. “Go ahead and try to nurse him.”

Caleb watched everyone fuss about Veth-Mother, while Veth-Mother herself seemed too happy to pay attention to any of them, and the little happy smile around his own mouth wouldn’t stop. He tried to cover it up with a hand, but it just came back the moment he wasn’t watching for it. He was happy.

He probably shouldn’t be—after all, he was Forgot and Failure, who did something so big and bad—but right now it was happening anyway. Caleb was unstoppably happy. Nice-Yeza appeared at his side, and the same too-happy-to-care feel was all over his own face. He grinned at Caleb, and Caleb wanted more than anything to start smiling and never stop. He bit his lip to try and hide it, ducking his head so the long-red that grew on top of him hid his face, fighting not to grin with all his might.

“Where’d my boys go,” Veth-Mother’s speak-sounds came, and she gestured at Caleb and Nice-Yeza sitting off to the side. “Come here, come here, come give me a kiss.”

Nice-Yeza obediently came to her, giving her a mouth-touch on the cheek, and Caleb let himself find a place on Veth-Mother’s other side. The little animal was lying quiet in her arms now, and Caleb bent forward to look at it, drinking up every detail of the tiny face. Perfect. And for a moment he wished an all consuming wish for speak-words to come back to him, so he could say all the things in his think.

_Hello. I love you, and you are perfect, Veth-Baby-Little-One._

“What’dya think?” Came Veth-Mother’s talk, making him look at her chin. “He’s your little brother, Cay.”

Caleb looked back down at the little-animal, as Veth tilted it at a better viewing angle for his appreciative eyes. It was so tiny. Obviously it belonged to Veth-Mother, but at the moment it didn’t look like much of anything really. Just a tiny bundle of pink, and wrinkled-hairless-ugly. Caleb was certain he’d never seen anything more perfect ever.

Not even Her. His Beautiful-Evil, who was so pretty in his memory-images of them-together.

No, in this moment the little-animal was more perfect, and Caleb had given up on trying to be anything but happy. He even felt good enough to share himself a little. Arranging his body carefully, he was able to lean over so his chin was perched on Veth-Mother’s upper arm, close but not embracing. It made Veth-Mother go completely still, and Nice-Yeza raised his eyebrows. But Caleb didn’t see that, because he was too busy enjoying the almost-touch of Veth-Mother’s body by his face, and looking at the little-animal she’d made.

Yes, yes. Forgot’s old life was never this perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby Luc brings news from the womb:
> 
> To all the people that left a comment or showed their support on the last chapter, THANK YOU. I can’t begin to express how encouraging that was. Your comments do a lot to keep me motivated and inspired to create. If you feel like sharing your thoughts or leaving a comment on this chapter, I would feel deeply appreciative.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aw yea. Guess who’s _back_ Bay-Bee! This guy. Yuh.
> 
> This is just a short and sweet lil chapter, but I hope it brings you smiles and entertainment.

“Veth...”

Veth groaned, only half questioning, the other half just sleepy.

“Veth.”

“Mmm’yuh...?”

“Veth, it’s your turn.”

“S’not.”

“Yes it is! I changed him last time.”

“D’like to see you squeeze an entire baby out of your cooch...”

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean...”

“I’m an invalid.” Veth said piteously, trying to pull the comforter higher over her shoulder.

“Veth.“

“Invalid.”

“Veth—“

“I’m in recovery.”

“Veth, what’s the point of us taking turns if you’re not gonna do it?”

With a show of the appropriate stiffness and groaning, Veth peeled herself away from the mattress. After all, Yeza did have a point, and all the whispered arguing had sort of forced her to wake up anyway. Luc was fussing with increasing vigor by the time she made it over to the crib where he slept, and she picked him up with a stifled yawn, trying to shush him before a full blown tantrum could start.

A diaper check disproved _that_ being the issue, so Veth shuffled over to fetch her pillow from the bed, intending to throw it in the rocking chair before she sat to nurse. But when she turned around there was a dark sliver along the edge of the ajar bedroom door, which had been closed just moments before. The yawning crack made her pause, an uncomfortable prickle running down her neck. That wasn’t at all creepy...

“Caleb?” She hissed, trying to peer more fully into the darkness.

The crack in the door widened, and a pair of round, nervous blue eyes peeked in, just above the floor. Equal relief and affection washed over her, and Veth sighed, heart rate returning to normal. “You can come in,” she invited gently, waving the shrinking figure forward. At the friendly sign Caleb crawled through the opening, shuffling across the floor in a creeping manner she’d always noticed him favoring when he was trying to be quiet.

He made a low noise as he got close, a low hum of tender worry in his throat, trying to lean in and look at Luc. At his anxiety Veth obliged in tipping forward a little to let Caleb check the baby’s face, watching blue eyes hungrily devour his tiny features before she settled back in her chair. Looking more relaxed and unhurried, Caleb flopped down to sit cross legged in front of her, elbows settling on his knees. He sighed lazily and ran a hand through his hair, before scratching his chin with his eyes fixed on the window.

Veth shivered. It was times like this that Caleb could seem so...so...Well. _Normal_. In the brief, absentminded moments when he wasn’t afraid, and he wasn’t staring the world out of countenance, and wasn’t making the rudimentary sounds that represented his only attempts at talking. When he did something so...ordinary. Scratching his beard like he was thinking about something, tying his hair back with sure, precise movements, or rolling up his sleeves with calm intent on his face before attempting some task. For a moment the he would seem so real that Veth had a tingling certainty in her blood that he’d been meant to _be_ somebody once.

She hadn’t ever felt like sharing her thoughts with Yeza, who said he was less concerned with Caleb’s past than the issue of improving his future, to the best of their ability. But sometimes Veth wondered. And sometimes she was almost sure he hadn’t always been just a wild-boy, or a slowminded idiot someone had mistreated just because he was doomed to be handicapped and dim-witted. There were flashes where he could seem so self sufficient, and adult-like. 

In a way they made her the saddest of all, because they made it clear how far Caleb had drifted now. It made him look faded. And still further fad _ing_ _,_ as he seemed to grow more and more at ease with their life together. Their family, their house, and himself. Most of his hair-trigger fight and flight was gone now, but it seemed like some kind of internal struggle to push himself, or maintain something within him had gone with it too. Like he allowed himself to be this weak, innocent remnant, when the defensiveness was no longer needed.

The moment of illumination never lasted long, and if vanished away now, when Veth started to nurse. His moment of outward normalcy made her feel a bit shy about doing it openly, as she would have with just a sleeping Yeza in the room. But when she looked around there wasn’t anything to throw over her front, and she just resigned herself to the vulnerability and shimmied the shoulder of her nightgown off. By the time Veth had gotten Luc settled comfortably, the impression made on her was gone.

She was once more newly-Mother-of-two Veth, and he was just the strange, awkward, mute but harmless dim-wit she’d accidentally taken in. Caleb had gotten fascinated by the woodgrain in front of him on the floor, tracing his thumbnail along the grooves with his head on one side, and Veth watched him to keep herself awake while the baby did his best to suck her titties off. Watching Caleb get fixated on random objects Veth had to wonder what on earth he was thinking, in his own little voiceless world. What he saw, through those wise but ignorant eyes.

Yet after all this time she’d become pretty sure Caleb would never be able to tell her. Some things were obvious. He wasn’t catatonic, some sort of thought process did go on in that rumpled head of his. But what that process was..what made him refuse to stay in the kitchen when she was putting wood in the cookingstove, or what he saw when he would stare at the veins on a leaf for hours...why he would cry over books, and what had made him so afraid of brunette women were less clear.

They were just more mysteries Veth felt ambivalently curious about. Things that might have unpleasant answers.

He perked back up when she sat Luc up to burp him, and looked so tense with restrained interest he could hardly sit still. When she began patting the baby’s back, Caleb shuddered in place, then reached forward to join his hand to hers, as if he couldn’t physically stop himself. And the tiny but perceptible smile on his face made Veth pull her hand away, so she could just hold the baby while Caleb did all the patting. It was like that, with Caleb’s smile though—for whatever possibly depressing reason, Caleb tended to be very shy, and didn’t smile often—when she saw it, she couldn’t help but indulge whatever strange new impulse had made his face illuminate with that shy grin. His smile was the reason she had bits of torn up paper all over the house, would purposefully tangle her yarn balls into hopeless knots for him to undo, and had a chemist shop that was now arranged entirely by bottle types.

It was her secret collection: the number of times she’d gotten him to smile.

Luc spat up a warm mouthful of milk on the rag over her nightgown, and Veth stirred herself from the moment of revelry. She glanced over at Caleb, after she’d put the baby back down, and he was still just watching all her movements while remaining cross legged.

“Well...Love ya, Lebby.” Veth said, and squeezed back into bed.

Silence settled back into the room, as Veth got comfortable. She could hear Yeza’s gentle breathing when she sat still, and then a faint rustle from Caleb. While she watched him stealthily, the human crept across the floor in the darkness, leaning forward to look into the crib. It was halfling sized, mounted on rockers, and small enough that he could look into it while sitting down. He began rocking it on its carved wooden feet, just looking at the baby with his strange, reluctant smile. Veth pinched herself to keep awake and watch him, and the wordless affection she was witnessing made her eyes burn.

Thank all the fucking gods in Exandria that she’d been lucky enough to rescue this boy. This, strange, studious, tender boy with mild eyes and flaming hair. There were times when Veth saw Caleb’s fears and scars, and they made her angry. Full of vengeance against whatever heartless shitheads had made him so hurt and afraid. But there were other times—times like now—when Caleb’s gentleness made her unspeakably sad for the heartless people that had abused him.

Who looked at a sweet, harmless boy like this, and were so cruel, or broken, or empty inside that they could only think of ways to hurt him? How ugly did your soul have to be, if you were fortunate enough to gain possession of a heart like Caleb’s, and yet not have capability of appreciating it? From her point of view it seemed like an awfully cold, and bitter way to live. Having no hint of softness or beautifying life in your soul.

The emotional moment was just enough to drain her completely, and she fell asleep listening to the stealthy creak of Caleb rocking the baby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your continued support in the comment section is the wind beneath my wings. Thank you all for being so kind, and as always I would love to hear your impressions of this chapter. ❤️


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Eight: AKA the one where I give Caleb the most idyllic family life you could possibly imagine, because imma bout to ruin it.

Caleb liked being happy. Walking with a bundle strapped to his back, watching Veth-Mother and Nice-Yeza ahead of him, while the Hot-Shine warmed him all over, Called-Caleb was very much happy. His carers were holding Little-Brother’s hands, swinging him between them as he screamed and windmilled his legs. Watching it made Caleb grin, enjoying the green-and-warm of everything about this light-time.

He didn’t know where they were going, hiking through the tall-greens and far away from the people-settlement where they lived. Looking back he couldn’t even see the civilization-place anymore, and there was nothing but little-singers and the occasional flash of furry-animals to be see through the plants. Caleb liked the big alone-quiet. With just him and Mother and Yeza. He could make pretend that they were the only ones in the Everything. Being here in the green-everywhere with his family, no things to worry about, no eyes to be frightened of, Caleb felt free. And free felt happy.

Ahead of him his family was coming to a stop, Nice-Yeza dropping the load on his shoulders, while Veth-Mother went down on her knees to unroll it over the ground. Caleb trudged up and deposited his bundle too before looking around at the place where they were. Here the tall-greens fell back in an open place, letting light from the Hot-Shine in, so that the air was warm and summer-smelling. Flower-plants and the glint of the occasional insect-bug beckoned invitingly from the shifting grass-greens, each one fascinating, irresistible for Caleb’s appreciative eyes. 

Unconsciously he drifted away from the group where Nice-Yeza and Veth-Mother were laying out good-eats carefully wrapped up to stay fresh. He saw a bright-toned-bug on blurred, rapid wings go singing by, darting skillfully through the air, and was immediately captivated. Gently brushing aside the greens in his way with careful hands, Caleb crossed the open-place in pursuit of it. He found the quick-insect perched on a grass-green, and dropped down on hands and knees to get close, hardly breathing for fear of startling it. The tiny creature was beautiful. A slender body, covered in iridescent scales, with many faceted eyes, and four long insubstantial oval-shaped wings. Caleb bit his lip with carful rapture, going still altogether, as he examined it, still trying not to breathe. 

Forgot had long ago lost the names for all such creatures, things he’d once known and could have displayed with proud-smartness. But the names were all gone now, along with his Birth-Called which I-Am-Caleb had replaced. There were times when the empty-forgotten would have made him upset, and frustrated with himself, still so certain that he was only smart if he could learn things that were cold, and neat, and full of facts. Not anymore. 

Now he wasn’t so sure that knowing the names of the things he was looking at was the most important thing. In all his memory-images of before-forgetting, he couldn’t remember appreciating things very much. He didn’t look at little animals and see them, instead of just knowing smart things about them. He’d never looked at color-lights (like the ones that Veth-Mother’s glass-things in the light made), and cared about their beauty more than some smart-fact he knew made them do that. He hadn’t ever looked at babies before Little-Brother came along. Caleb was learning to be smart in a way that Forgot wasn’t. He’d re-learned how to learn. Sort of. It was hard to make clear in his head.

He saw more, but knew less about all he saw. 

As he looked at the little green-shiny-bug now, all this passed through his think. Like right now, he didn’t know what the insect-bug was really called. Of course it had some name he’d forgotten. But that didn’t matter. He watched little tiny legs scrub its head, transparent wings flicking and tilting against the air, and saw its perfection so much clearer without complicated-thinks in the way. Caleb had learned he didn’t have to be smart to appreciate things. 

It wasn’t so bad, really.

Little-Brother toddling up to leap on his back, scattered all these thinks, and the shiny-green-bug was frightened away. Caleb jumped, startled out of himself, and found Little-Brother giggling in his ear, fat arms wrapped around his neck. For one more moment Caleb looked to wonder where the pretty-bug had gone, but he gave up on it, and turned his thinks around. Reaching up, he loosened Little-Brother’s arms, using the boy’s covering-things to lift him up, dangling at arms length.

This was another thing that Caleb was proud of himself for. Almost all the time, he could manage to tolerate Little-Brother touching him, without frightening or pushing him away. There were also many times when Caleb would immediately try to find some alternative way to interact, so that Little-Brother wasn’t unconsciously irritating him, but he could manage to take the holds, and drool, and runny noses without snapping. Little-Brother didn’t know how to not be touchy, and Caleb would rather put up with him, than disappoint the child to get some space. 

Still holding Little-Brother up by the clothes, Caleb swung him about until the child was giggling madly, flapping his arms like the little-singers did to fly. It was easy to make Little-Brother laugh. But Caleb wasn’t very strong-armed at all, and couldn’t keep swinging him forever. Roaring like an animal, Caleb charged across the greens with him and dumped him down on a soft-cover Veth-Mother had unrolled for them to sit on, seized its edge and charged off again, dragging Little-Brother behind him like a sled. The fabric jerking under his bottom made Little-Brother topple over backward, screeching with pleasure as Caleb bore him along. 

“Caleb! That’s the picnic blanket!” Veth-Mother’s voice made speak behind him, but Caleb was off now, Little-Brother rustling behind him over the greens.

This wasn’t so bad, Caleb’s think told him, while he looked over his shoulder at Little-Brother bouncing along the ground and screaming with glee at the top of his voice. Baby-Little-Brother was perfect, and being Big-Brother was the best of all things to be. 

Master would have disagreed. Caleb knew that Evil-Master had been ambitious. Full of hatreds and power. When Caleb was young and Master was his Teacher, to control all of Everything had been the highest of best to reach for. That was what Master would have made him think. 

But now he knew it was wrong. Caleb had discovered this better-way, all by himself. He was very proud of that: finding the truth on his own. Nobody teaching him. Just his own think, making such smarter-choices with no help. For this, Caleb was very much smart enough. It was easy to see being a nice, kind, gentle-carer was better for little-peoples than the cold, ugly, hurtful-teacher Master chose to be. 

The truth was, Called-Caleb had been giving a lot of thinks to this problem. Late in the dark-times, when he was prowling, and everybody else was sleeping. When he would rock Little-Brother-Luc back to sleep before his cryings could wake Veth-Mother and Nice-Yeza up from what he knew were much needed rests. Or times like now, when he looked behind him to see Little-Brother’s smile so big it showed his teeth growing in.

Looking at Little-Brother’s face in the dark, Caleb was always wondering how anyone could bear to hurt him. Why would Master hurt any of his children, if he knew it was not good for them? And surely Master did know. He was smartest of all, of course he knew this simple thing. Why ignore it? 

Caleb could only think of one answer.

Master was evil, and he liked being cruel. He liked making peoples hurt. He liked giving pain, and making fear, and causing grief, more than he liked good students and happy children. Master was a monster really, hiding under pretty skin. 

And Caleb mustn’t be like him. That was what being Big-Brother meant. He had to put away the Thing that Master had made. The smart-person which Forgot had once been, and which Master had praised, and groomed. He had to be Little-Brother’s less smart, and more happy Big-Brother-Caleb. That was the new thing he’d discovered, forging a better way.

“Luk-ey! Caleb! Come back over here and eat!” 

Caleb dragged Little-Brother back to Veth-Mother at the sound of her calling them, and they all sat down to swallow the good-things they’d brought, sitting in a circle. Veth-Mother, Nice-Yeza, and Little-Brother all chattered talk-sounds at each other while they ate, and Caleb listened to all the sounds flying back and forth. Sometimes he could pick up vague impressions of what they must be making-speak about, but more often it was beyond his comprehension, and he was just listening to sounds. Pleasant, but no more intelligible to him than the songs of the flying-animals in the tall-greens.

Forgot, Called-Caleb, had grown used to that endless buzzing in his thinks long ago. Now he just looked back and forth between his people, and dedicated himself to understanding their faces instead of trying to comprehend their words. Seeing all the smiles, and sensing all the happy-feels they were sending at each other, it wasn’t so bad…Caleb didn’t mind this. 

It wasn’t always easy. When Baby-Brother made his first word-sound, and Caleb knew he would never make it too, that had been almost too hard. He watched Veth-Mother get happy-smiling, watched her and Nice-Yeza make many joyful speaks over Little-Brother, and knew that he couldn’t make them smile that way. Little-Brother was only a baby, but already he could make sounds and understand things that stupid-Caleb couldn’t.

That hurt. It was easier to love Little-Brother when they were the same. Both no-voice, both simple, both stupid together. But Little-Brother was learning, and he wasn’t like Caleb anymore. He was learning word sounds, talking to Veth-Mother, and looking at sound-symbols like he knew what they were. He could follow along when Veth-Mother talked word-books out loud, and could make-speak when she did. He was better already. Better at smart. But that was only the first sting. After that was over, Caleb realized something, and the thing made him admiring-happy. 

Little-Brother was going to be special. 

Caleb knew. Little-Brother was special, and he was going to be smart, strong, powerful, like Failed-Forgot never was. He was going to be like Caleb, and then better. Little-Brother was never going to be ruined by Master. He wasn’t going to be hurt, and tricked, and stolen-from like Master hurt, and tricked, and stole from his children. Little-Brother was going to grow up free from that, and Caleb was going to watch him—full of praise and admiration all the time—while Little-Brother got so much better. 

It didn’t matter that Caleb was stupid. Little-Brother would be smarter. 

Now when Little-Brother made speak-sounds, pointing at symbols, Caleb always listened with fascination. When Little-Brother called a furry-animal “Doggy” he would nod along, happy just to hear so-smart Brother talk. Everybody liked Little-Brother’s learning, but none more than happy-sad-feeling-Caleb, who was watching for every step Baby-Luc outshone him. Because Caleb didn’t mind being nothing, as long as his Little-Brother was something. 

So he ate his good-things, and laughed at Little-Brother like everyone else did. The talk-sounds washed over him, and he didn’t mind that he couldn’t understand them. He just tilted his face up toward the Hot-Shine, letting it warm him all the way from head to toes, and listened without needing to comprehend. Voices around him and warmth like this meant that Forgot was safe. That he was Called-Caleb now, and that Called-Caleb was Home. 

Yes, he decided again, looking at Veth-Mother and Little Brother making noises at each other while they didn’t know Caleb was listening so closely. This was a much better way to be. Master had ruined Forgot’s old-people. But Caleb was happy with his new ones. It wasn’t so bad really, even to be stupid. Not when he knew these peoples loved him anyway. It really wasn’t so bad at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the fluff my friends, because it’s about to be burned for your viewing pleasure. I do genuinely wish there were more family scenes I could be inspired to show you, but the problem with happy things is that they don’t actually provide much in the way of a story. You can’t have a plot if nothing bad happens.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for pretty much everything associated with getting kidnapped by a bunch of goblins. This is an angsty chapter again.

Veth’s head was a whirl. She hadn’t known before now that her heart could beat as hard as it was pounding right now. Her feet hurt, and her wrists were burning from the rope around them, and all the noise and stress was making her head ache. That was just herself. Beyond that there was the barely restrained panic of wondering what had become of Luc, Caleb, and Yeza. Were they ok?

She couldn’t see them with the smelly burlap sack over her head, and the wretched creatures marching her along were so loud she couldn’t even catch a sound of her family in the din. There was nothing to reassure herself with, and the suspense of worrying was far more painful than the cut of the ropes could be. The scrapes on her knees were scorching with pain but that was only temporary. The phantom thought of loosing contact with Luc, or Yeza, or even Caleb was much more distressing. Her knees she could ignore. Threats to her family, not so much. 

It was all happening so fast. The goblins had attacked out of nowhere. Yeza had only gone out to fetch a couple logs to bank up the wood stove for the night, when she’d heard him cry out, and before she’d had time to do more than jump with panic at the sound, seven of the dreadful monsters had come shrieking and jabbering into the kitchen to seize her. She hadn’t even had time to grab a kitchen knife they were so quick, and even though she could hear the sound of breaking glass upstairs followed by Luc’s toddler wail, she’d been captured much too quickly to do anything about it. Instead she was swiftly tied, her head had been thrust into a sack, and then she’d been tugged along in the darkness, surrounded by goblin voices and the cries of other fearful prisoners. With no idea where, or if, her loved ones were somewhere with her in all the fray. 

Something was yanking her wrists mercilessly forward now, and she had no choice but to stumble along with the tugging as the goblins made an enormous clatter and banging around her. She’d lost track of how long they’d been marching. It felt like only minutes, lost in a hot, blind, stuffy whirl, like some extremely rapid nightmare. But the absolute bone weariness in her legs asserted that it had really been much longer. Certainly longer and farther than she’d ever been forced to travel before.

They seemed to be reaching somewhere though. The smog of greasy torches was leering through the sack over her face, while their entire journey before now had been performed in complete darkness. The tugging had slowed too, changing from a relentless forward drag, to a jagging back and forth that whipped her first one way then another, like a hapless person trapped in the middle of someone’s game at tug-o-war. Either the goblins around her had gotten significantly louder, or there were more of them, but she could hardly hear herself think over their din. 

At that moment the noise became much more muffled, like the shouting of people in a small carpeted room, instead of a reverberating open space. The torchlight was very bright now, and close enough to make her feel an instinct to hold her face further away from them. Not that she could control anything about her body’s movements right now. Then suddenly the tugging on her wrists ceased all together, as the sack was whipped off her face, and she realized they were in an earthy cave. 

Selfish relief shouldn’t have been the first impression she felt, after being granted her sight again. But almost the first thing she saw was Yeza’s face, also being freed from a makeshift blindfold, with only two people between them. Apparently they weren’t the only ones the goblins had been intent on stealing away from their homes on the outskirts of Felderwin. The hostages had all been roped together in a long line, which was now being unwound, so that familiar faces could be seen all around her. 

But immediately after the moment of comfort, greater anxiety and dread surged up to take its place. Even if she was unseparated from Yeza, and he was unhurt for now, their situation was still dire. Her poor little Luc might well be endangered too. This was no time to feel lucky, and grateful for Yeza’s presence. 

All her worst fears were confirmed when she looked behind her and almost immediately saw Luc. To her horror she realized that the goblins, careless of how to restrain a child, has looped a rope around the middle of his soft toddler’s tummy. He would doubtless have dangled to the point of death or injury if the person behind him hadn’t managed to loop their bound arms around his body to support his weight. Veth felt like she was going to be sick. He was unharmed for now, but the prospect of what might have happened while she was blindfolded and ignorant made her stomach clench with dread. Far too close a call. 

Following after Luc, she spotted Caleb too, and his state made her eyes burn. He stumbled in last of all the captives, bound and stooped painfully forward because the next prisoner before him was a tiny gnome only half his size, and he was bent almost double to accommodate her. But more than that he was covered in bleeding scratches, and cruel little bites. The goblins seemed to be acting especially vicious with him, driving him forward with spear points, and Veth watched him stumble into a painful cut or stab on seemingly every side. Every goblin he got close to would snarl and strike at him, and the frightened, confused man couldn’t do a thing to defend himself with his hands tied. 

Before Veth could think what to possibly do or say that would comfort him, if there even was such a thing, one of the ghastly little creatures was sidling up to cut her loose from her bonds. Every bone in her body wanted desperately to leap at the brute and tear its face off, but the bloody serrated knife it was using to cut her free was a more than adequate damper on her enmity, and she scowled but made no attempt to struggle. It was so clearly a death sentence at this point to speak out or do anything to cause trouble. She had more than her own life to worry about. 

“You have money.” The goblin snarled, when she was cut loose, and it began waving the knife at her chest. “Lift arms. You still.” 

Veth obeyed, and the beastly thing immediately began groping over her breasts and into her armpits, it’s bony little fingers kneading into the soft flesh as it moved down her torso. The goblin said something that sounded gleeful to the other monster beside it, who was similarly engaged, and the one patting her down poked her cheek. Both sniggered, and Veth didn’t have a clue what they were saying, but it was clearly something nasty and goblinoid about her. The entire ordeal of being searched was both painful and demeaning, while the beast poked and twisted her about, even going so far as to ferret around under her skirts in its disgusting quest for valuables. 

When Veth was finally left alone, panting and horribly flushed, feeling both cold and sweaty, Caleb was no better off. No sooner was she able to pay attention to anything else than her own embarrassment then she caught the sound of Caleb’s sobbing whimpers. He sounded like the scared, filthy boy who’d whined at her when she first touched his hands and made him take his fingers out of his mouth, all those years ago in a jail cell. Terrified, and pleading, and so wrong from how Veth and Yeza had worked hard that he should be.

The poor boy was almost curled up in a ball from how desperately he was trying to protects himself, flinching and cringing away from every groping hand and patting touch as if they burned him. The goblins, vindictive and conniving, had taken notice of his extreme discomfort under the pat-down and were gleefully taking advantage of it. They weren’t even hurting him, but a shoving crowd of the brutes were pushing at each other for a chance to pat or squeeze him, which seemed to distress him as much as outright torture would have done. 

Veth’s blood boiled, rage filling her at the sight of their senseless malevolence, while her hands shook. Everyone around her was aware of Caleb’s pitiful situation, many of the prisoners trying to look away and ignore it, but Veth was in a frothing fury instead. Not even thinking truly of her safety anymore, she lunged in the goblin’s direction, though she didn’t even have a concept of what she would do if she made it there. But the other goblins were shoving their hostages back now, corralling them back into a cramped prison cell dug out into the earth and clumsily fitted with iron bars. 

Furious though she was, Veth’s attempts to rebel or intervene on Caleb’s behalf weren’t noticed by anyone, and she was peremptorily shoved into the cell. The stumbling, frightened prisoners were all herded back into the prison, and finally Caleb was released from his spiteful tormentors to be shoved in with the last captives. The door closed on them all with a harsh clang, and the hostages were left to themselves, in various stages of trembling terror, breathless relief, or weeping. 

At last Veth was able to reach Caleb with aid, and was among some of the first to get near him. Ruthlessly shoving and screeching out “Get back! Get away from him, all of you! Don’t touch him!” Veth forced her way to the front, and sent the other sympathizers packing, before more than a couple could get a hand on him, offering commiserating pats that Veth knew would be the dire opposite of helpful at the moment. 

Caleb was a wreck by the time she reached him, trembling and twitching with hypertension, the ticks obviously out of his ability to control by now. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely use them, trying to stroke himself without much success as huge gasping sobs shook his frame, and he dug his fingers so deeply into the flesh that Veth winced with sympathy. She’d always noticed him fidgeting and rocking himself for comfort when he was upset, or even when he was feeling any kind of strong emotion really, and he was unmistakably doing it now, apparently unable to stop. 

Usually Caleb’s odd quirks and sensitivities didn’t bother her, but Caleb’s attempts at self-soothing were turning sour, and Veth felt a heavy weight of concern growing in her stomach. His should blades kept bumping into the prison bars behind him, and he was squeezing his arms so tight Veth was afraid of him causing bruises. Then he threw his head back on the next rock backwards, and she realized his collisions with the bars were unmistakably intentional, and her resolve not to tamper with him broke. She absolutely couldn’t tolerate him injuring himself. 

The moment she touched him, Caleb cringed away from her, shielding his face and throwing himself back against the wall so hard Veth cringed. Even trying to mitigate their contact and only touch his hands didn’t help, and he fought her with a desperation that made it clear how invasive and unwelcome her touches were, no matter how kindly she meant them. Throat tight and eyes burning, Veth gave up her ministrations, sitting back helplessly while Caleb raked blunt fingernails over his arms and yanked at his hair. Wasn’t there anything she could do?

If there was, Veth couldn’t think of it, and finally she gave up trying to brainstorm ways to help. She’d just have to wait it out, and pick up his pieces later, if he allowed her to. At least she hoped he didn’t draw blood. That would be painful to watch, and probably more than she could clean up on her own, without any proper medical supplies or bandages. But the best she could do was hope really, and it felt absolutely awful. And the worst thing about it, was knowing that her shortcomings resulted in prolonged distress for Caleb, who she had failed to comfort. It was difficult to convince herself that his acute distress wasn’t really her fault. That she hadn’t somehow caused it, or failed to prevent it, by being a cruel, callous person that just chose to sit back and watch him be in pain. 

Finally Veth began to think Caleb was winding down, and she was seeing signs of a calm after the storm. At last his incessant rocking had mellowed down into stillness, and he was no longer bruising himself against the prison bars. His posture was still almost painfully cramped to look at, curled in a tight, trembling fetal position, with his hands fisted in his hair. But at least he wasn’t tearing at his scalp, or clawing at his arms with white-knuckled fingers digging into his skin. So Veth ventured to hope that maybe this would be slightly better.

She tried clearing her throat to get his attention, but got no response. Not even a twitch to indicate that maybe he’d heard her make a noise, or was aware of her presence. Trying hard to move slowly and terrified of frightening him into a frenzy again, Veth climbed to her feet and tiptoed a little closer. It felt like rescuing him from that jail cell in Felderwin all over again…only this time she couldn’t really help him escape from anything.

“Caleb?” She whispered, as gently as she could manage. 

This time she at least got a response from him. He didn’t lift his head to look at her, but a tired little moan quavered from his throat, and one shaky hand darted out to latch onto her skirt. For a moment Veth thought it meant he wanted her closer, but he cringed away when she took another step toward him, with a keening sound of misery. She gave up on the attempt at closer proximity at once. 

And finally, finally, Veth seemed to have done the right thing. Caleb’s shoulders dropped again, and after a long, tense stalemate his other hand anchored in the folds of her skirts next to the first one. He still wasn’t touching her, but Veth couldn’t find it in herself to care. It didn’t matter. None of the awkward, and dirty, and uncomfortable parts of this situation mattered. Because touching her clothes or sharing her body heat was as close as Caleb ever came to embracing her, and Veth craved that connection. It happened so rarely, and there were so many other times when Veth wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around him and squeeze but knew that she couldn’t, so she’d learned to savor the almost-embraces when they came. 

It ended too soon. Yeza appeared at her elbow, picking his way across the huddles of prisoners to reach her, and Veth knew the moment was over. They were still in the same position, still close and warm, but Yeza’s appearance broke their phantom bubble of privacy. No sooner did she have a second to breathe, then she had just enough strength to tackle the next thing, and the brief respite was over. She remembered Luc’s brush with danger, and Yeza’s wellbeing, and all her worry for them chilled the contentment she’d enjoyed for a moment with Caleb, as she turned to check on the rest of her family. 

“All safe.” Yeza said as he came up, forestalling her worried looks and anxious questions, knowing how jumpy Veth would be at the sight of them both. “Those apes nearly sliced him in half, but Melory got a hold of him…He’ll have a bruise around his tummy for the next few days, but he’ll be fine.” 

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?” Veth demanded, unable to quite conquer her tendency to panic, even with Yeza’s reassurance. “They didn’t scratch you anywhere, or something?” Luc, ever the clown, was already giggling and kicking his legs with glee as she turned him over and about. He obviously felt well enough to laugh and squeal, ready to see the health checkup as their latest good game. But Veth couldn’t make herself believe it. The actual sight of him smiling wasn’t enough to keep her from checking his body on every side, poking his baby’s belly, and bending his limbs this way and that.

“We’re alright, Veth…” Yeza said gently, restraining her hands and ducking to make her look at his eyes. “I mean it. Look at me, sweetie. We’re ok. Nobody’s hurt.” 

For a moment Veth stared at him, trying to let the comforting words get through. Then her vision unexpectedly blurred, and she found her throat closing up. “Thank goodness,” she choked, voice husky, and yanked her husband into a hug with the arm not supporting Luc’s weight. In truth the baby was rather squashed, and she was forced to pull away after a few seconds when he started kicking and fussing. But it was a perfect two seconds. The first free breath she’d inhaled for hours.

Caleb was there as soon as she pulled back. He hadn’t joined in the hug, and he still looked a little skittish. But his obvious aversion to making eye contact or being paid attention to seemed outweighed by a greater need to check on Luc. Unlike Yeza though, she had no comforting words the human would understand, so she held out Luc in the air for inspection. At least, she’d meant for Caleb to just look, assuming he would be unwilling to touch a toddler at the moment. When she held out Luc though, Caleb immediately took him, setting his feet on the ground. Then Caleb carefully pulled his shirt up, and Veth knew he was scanning for injuries just like she had. 

“Thank goodness.” Veth croaked again, dragging Yeza into another hug. He squawked and poked his arms out for a few seconds, before embracing her back, but Veth didn’t care. All she could think about was squeezing him as hard as she could, and trying not to cry more than the minimal amount on his shirt collar. “I can’t believe we’re ok.” She mumbled into her husband’s shoulder. “I thought we were gonna die for sure…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caleb was scraped to shit and the goblins were being so cruel because he fought them, trying to protect Luc, and got some good hits in before sheer numbers overpowered him. That’s why they were holding such a grudge. I wish I could have included that part, but it just didn’t seem to fit, so I gave up on it. 
> 
> Also the goblins called Veth fat, when they were searching her and she didn’t understand what they were saying. They thought it would make her especially good to eat. I just couldn’t figure out a reason for them to talk about her in common, so now I’m telling you later, in case you were curious.
> 
> Please, let me know what you think! The Traumatic Choo-Choo Train is picking up steam.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: for more of Caleb having self-esteem issues, some mild descriptions of starvation, and allusions to past child-abuse from Trent.

Caleb was good at this. He was also scared, and hurting, and always empty-middle…but he was good at being those things.

For a while he’d been sure he figured out that Master was all bad. But now Caleb wasn’t so certain again. He was cold and empty, and it was easier because Master had taught him how to be. It made it hard to hate Master, because it was nice to be good at things, and these were things that nobody but Master had tried to teach him. All his familiarity with pain was from Relentless-Master hurting him, making him strong for it, so now Caleb wasn’t scared of it like he might have been.

He knew Veth-Mother and Nice-Yeza were scared. They tried to hide it, but Caleb saw they were struggling. Not like him.

It felt strange to be better at anything than they were, but Caleb was better at this. Better at the endurance, keeping his thinks in safe little boxes, and functioning through persistent distractions and discomforts. He was used to being empty, not having enough to swallow, ignoring dirt, and going without things like warmth and comfort. It had been long times now since Nice-Yeza and Veth-Mother had rescued him from that, but he still remembered how it felt, and he knew he could live through it. Somehow he felt ready.

Caleb was glad he was ready. Even if all of it had been so bad that he never wanted to look at memory-images of it again. Even if they made his sleep full of terrible pictures and screaming when he woke up. Somehow, he was still glad to be good at being hurt. Because it meant one less thing for his new-family to worry about. At last, for once, he wasn’t a burden, wasn’t confused and didn’t need help. He was strong. Even if it was for bad reasons, and because of bad-peoples. Master had made him strong, and his new-family needed it now.

That was why Caleb was doing this. Because he was good at it. The emptiness was burning a hole through his middle, feeling tight and squeezed, but Caleb wouldn’t feed it. He didn’t need that. There was a chunk of baked-eat hidden in his covering-things right now, but Caleb was coaching himself not to touch it, and swallow more than he had. The better-him wished he could go without all of it, but the smart-him knew that he needed some eats, or he would get dying.

So he’d taken what he had to, and now was saving the rest. He was hiding it for a special moment. It hadn’t come yet, but he knew it would, if he was patient-watchful long enough. Veth-Mother and Nice-Yeza had to take sleeps eventually.

At first he would have offered his eats to them right away. The green-skins were mean, and didn’t give enough things to swallow, so he and his family were all empty for more. Sometimes the green-skins didn’t even give anything at all, and Caleb knew his people were hurting during the long waits. He’d assumed Veth-Mother would take his gifts, because she needed them more than he did, and was smart enough to let him help her. But instead she’d been upset and irritated, and wouldn’t leave him alone until he’d taken his share of the eats back, giving him scowls and shrill scolding-word-sounds until she’d watched him chew it up and swallow it. Now Caleb knew, no matter how upset he was about it, she wouldn’t let him feed her like she should be eating, and he’d stopped trying.

That didn’t discourage him though. Caleb still had things he could do, which Veth-Mother didn’t know about, and they were also important to be done. Little-Brother was also important to feed, and he wasn’t stubborn like Veth-Mother was. So now Caleb was watching for a good moment, when both his carers would be asleep, and he could sneak his gifts to Little-Brother without being caught and stopped. It always happened eventually, if he stayed wakeful enough for it, and Caleb was very good at waiting.

Nice-Yeza’s eyes drooped, and then shut, and opened, and shut again. He was close. Caleb pretended not to be watching him, or he knew Nice-Yeza would feel the eyes. Poor Nice-Yeza was sleepy-exhausted, and Caleb was watching with bated breath for the sleep he knew would come. At last he heard it in Nice-Yeza’s wheezy sleep-breathing, and he looked over furtively to see the little-man sagging over with his seeing-glasses slipping down crooked on his nose. Caleb bit his lip and shivered with anticipation, quickly averting his eyes again.

Even now smart-Caleb didn’t make his move right away. He was being cautious-careful now, and didn’t trust Nice-Yeza and Veth-Mother to really be asleep. Better to be completely sure, because his plan would be ruined if they caught him even once. Nice-Yeza and Veth-Mother would never let him get away with giving gifts again. So he waited, until both were surely sleeping, before doing anything more than watching.

When he was sure the lax shoulders and mouths fallen ajar were real, Caleb made his move. Being all very-quiet he reached over Veth-Mother’s body without moving her, slipped one hand over Little-Brother’s mouth, and gently shook his knee. The boy stirred a little, still half asleep, and Caleb was quick to act before he could rouse fully. Little-Brother was easier to maneuver when he was still too groggy to care about anything. Caleb passed the eat into his tiny hands, quick and quiet.

It worked. Little-Brother, tired and trusting, knowing nothing but that he now had good-things in his hands, began swallowing it at once. When he was done he smiled, showing off his baby-teeth, and Caleb sighed with accomplishment. There. He’d done it. No one had caught him, and Little-Brother was happy. Good. Good...

Now he just had to keep remembering that. And forget that _he_ was still empty.

Little-Brother cooed, lifting up chubby arms to be held, and Caleb looked away. When no obliging holds came Little-Brother lunged, trying to wrap himself around Caleb’s legs, and Caleb’s concentration broke. He flinched away with a hiss, scrambling hastily to his feet in order to escape the unwanted touches. It made Veth-Mother blink awake as he turned away, and he heard her make his Called as he retreated. “Caleb?”

He didn’t look round, and she didn’t call him again. Breathing shallow and squeezing his fingers tight around nothing, Caleb moved away to find deeper shadows on the opposite side of the cage from Veth-Mother and Nice-Yeza’s. Then he found a nice blank dirt-wall and settled himself small on the ground in front of it, his seeing absorbed by the earth. And there he hugged around himself, tense and besieged by thinks.

He was so empty now.

Wanting to help Little-Brother had distracted him enough to hide it, but now he couldn’t think of anything else anymore. His middle hurt. Trying to soothe it away he squeezed himself, tight and good, to hide the feeling. But it wouldn’t go. His body hurt. He was empty-desperate-craving for the eat he’d given away now.

He wanted it back. Why hadn’t he taken it? He needed something to fill him up inside! Strong-Master would have hit him for being so sentimental-stupid. For not taking care of Self first, and worrying about other less-important-things like helpless-babies later, if he even chose to care at all. _After all,_ the cruel old man would tell him, _what use is Little-Brother to you really? It doesn’t help you, to keep him alive._

But the eat was gone now. Gone, gone, too late to be selfish for it. And now stupid, weak, crying Forgot had nothing but empty-pains to show for his efforts. He squeezed himself hard, bouncing his knee and obsessively thinking. Asking himself why he hadn’t kept it, why he hadn’t hidden it all for himself, why he’d thought this hurt would be bearable.

In the end he cried.

Not because he allowed himself to be weak for a moment, though that was what he told himself. He made up thinks about it being alright to fail and fumble for once, that just this time he would cry and be sorry for himself, that it was alright to feel any pain. But the tears would have come even if he didn’t pretend to tolerate them. They always did. Every time he did this: starving himself to take care of Little-Brother every sleeping-time, he cried after it was over.

Sometimes he couldn’t be kind to himself about it. He called himself evil, and dirty, for regretting the right choice. For wanting to take from Little-Brother. For wanting to be selfish, and logical, like Master-in-his-head told him to be. Sometimes he couldn’t be anything but disgusted by his filthy-bad-thoughts, hating every tear he shed for them.

But this time he made play that it was alright. Wasn’t selfish like he knew it really was, and that he wasn’t really a bad-person. He made up pretty thinks about his weeping. Like it wasn’t weak, or sinful, or cruel. He made pretend that being empty-starved was none of those things, while all deeper down he knew it was. The truth was that Forgot was ugly-wicked-wrong. Otherwise being good for Perfect-Little-Brother’s sake wouldn’t be so hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter isn’t too short to be satisfying? Because I wrote something I was happy with originally, but going over it in proofreading there wasn’t as much to it as I remembered?
> 
> Anyways, this is what I got from the fic-writing Magic Eight Ball, please let me know what you think! I hope you enjoyed, even if there’s not a super lot going on with it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t think there are any concerning TWs that should be mentioned, but of course correct me if I’m wrong.

“Let him go!”

The snarling little goblin yanked at Luc’s body in Veth’s arms, and she barely managed to catch his legs before the ugly creature could yank him away. She tried to hold on tightly. But she couldn’t get him back. More savage goblins clawed at her dress, until her feet left the ground. She was holding on to Luc as much for support as protectiveness now, suspended between him and the goblins dragging at her legs. The baby wailed, and Veth kicked, trying to get free as tears ran down her cheeks.

With unspeakable horror Veth watched weeping gashes open along Luc’s body, the cuts red and bleeding. She could see no knife, and no source, but more continued to open across his skin. Desperately she longed to close them, but she could never quite reach. All she could do was sit and look as blood soaked through Luc’s clothes.

Now the goblins were tearing him away, and she ran after them down a long endless hallway. The dirt walls about her stretched on, forever and ever. She could hear Luc crying in the distance, but she could never quite catch up to them. Always their clamoring voices and the smoke of torches were just around the next bend as she followed them, panting and eternally too slow.

Veth came awake with a snap, breathing hard and blinking. What a horrible nightmare. For several seconds it was all she could see, even with her eyes open. In the moments of immediate clarity following on the tail of her dream she could remember it with disturbing vividness, the singular image of Luc’s skin splitting open replaying in her head, inciting all the repulsion she’d felt in the dream as strongly as if she was still dreaming it.

Shivering, Veth sat up, trying to banish the feeling. Just a dream. A stupid dream. But she still found herself looking around, compelled to make sure every member of her family was safe. And there Luc was, in all his baby glory, drooling against Yeza’s shirt. The halfling man had positioned himself so Luc was pillowed between them, shielded from the cold, hard earth of their prison. She looked at them both, and a surge of fondness overcame her. Caleb was lying on her other side, not tucked against her like Luc and Yeza were, but the human’s face was turned in her direction as if he’d been intentionally sharing her space before he fell asleep.

They were all safe. Nothing had really happened. No one was coming to take Luc away…

Not yet.

That thought made Veth fight down another shiver, very purposefully not looking at one of her fellow prisoners on the other side of the cell. She didn’t want to think about it. The memory was terrible every time she recalled it. The poor woman had screamed herself into exhaustion after they’d taken the child away, and now significant hours had dragged by, making everyone hunch with guilty knowledge of the obvious outcome. They all knew what had happened, and no one knew quite what to do with the bereaved woman, skirting and shuffling helplessly around her pain.

Till that exact moment Veth hadn’t allowed herself to contemplate the possibilities which might loom in her future. Now she could do nothing but think about it. And suffer nightmares about it, the terror following her even into her dreams, where her mind could make it a reality. Thinking about her dreams made her recall the latest one and she shivered again, checking on Luc’s well-being even though she’d just glanced at him a second before. She huffed out an impatient breath, pulling her lower lip between her teeth, and scratched at a non-existent itch on her knee.

Looking up at the ceiling, Veth slipped a hand into her dress pocket. Groping around she felt her fingers close around something smooth and cylindrical. Carefully she drew it out into her lap, still not looking down at it, as she turned the object over and about in her hands. Then she looked down.

It was one of the only things Veth had managed to keep, because it looked like nothing special to the dirty cutthroat that had searched her. The liquid was clear, and there was no label on the simple bottle, because she hadn’t made one for it. An untrained eye would only see a corked decanter of water, nothing extraordinary, certainly nothing valuable. But oh, how wrong they would be.

Veth wasn’t even completely sure of its potency. She’d made it while tinkering around with Yeza’s tools, and stuck it in her pocket to show him during dinner. Only she’d forgotten by dinnertime, and the unlabeled bottle had gone ignored durning their meal. The rest was well known afterwards. A stack of dishes ready for washing, Yeza sent to retrieve wood for the fire that would heat the wash-water, Caleb walking off somewhere with Luc. A rock sailing through her kitchen window, confusion and panic, the tickle of burlap thrust over her head, a sickening blinded journey, the grate of a key, and shivering silence. It was all decided beforehand. By the time she remembered her latest alchemical experiment, it had been far too late to make a triumphant exhibition of it.

But as she looked down at her eleventh-hour weapon, Veth was glad she hadn’t displayed it. She could think of a thousand different scenarios where she hadn’t luckily kept it. If the goblin had smashed the bottle on the ground, if it had fractured in her pocket during all the jostling, gods forbid if she’d just _left_ it—sitting small, innocuous, and perfectly useless—on Yeza’s workbench after brewing it. There were so many horrifying alternatives where she wouldn’t have still been looking at it now. But she _was_ looking at it, and she _did_ still have it.

And Veth wasn’t going to be robbed of her baby like some other hapless woman had been.

Her hand closed securely around the bottle, squeezing it with silent resolve, and she looked down at Luc and Yeza again. She took careful note of the dirt on Luc’s face, streaked with dust and earth that she had nothing to wipe away with, the stains on his one set of clothes. She looked at Yeza, noticing the same signs. There was a hairline fracture running across the right side lens of his glasses, splitting the fragile prism in half, and he had several days worth of stubble coming in around his formerly neat mutton chops. After Veth had revealed her despair over the state of Luc’s only diaper, and her absolute perplexity as to how she was to wash it or find a proper replacement, Yeza had offered up both his vest and jacket to make rudimentary supplies out of. Veth had given up some of her petticoats too, and sweet, simple hearted Caleb had tried to take his shirt off till Veth put her foot down.

On the subject of Caleb…Veth looked over at him with a worried frown. His face was smooth and peaceful with untroubled sleep now, but Veth still felt a twist of worry when she looked at it. The boy was getting so thin. She’d made adamantly sure to divide their potions equally, even if the closefisted goblins hardly gave enough for one person’s full meal, and sharing meant all of them got even less. But Caleb was still loosing weight with alarming rapidity. It was only just starting to worry her, he’d been much thinner and weaker when they’d first taken him in, but she could see the warning signs. His cheeks were too angular, even through the dirty and tangled scruff on his face. His temples were thin, his eyes looked hollow, and she could see the delicate bones and tendons of his forearms and on the backs of his hands.

The persistent malnourishment troubled her, because she couldn’t think of a solution. Not without extra rations. And where on earth was she to get them? By materializing them straight from the wishful thinking in her dreams? The truth was, they all needed better food, and fast. She contemplated the prospect of seeing Luc’s cheekbones get sharp and hungry the way Caleb’s were, and the idea of it made her want to vomit, repulsed by the thought.

Honestly she was surprised Caleb seemed so indifferent to their situation. He was always helpful and attentive now, expressing himself with unusual physicality, always ready to display his cheerfulness when she looked at him. It had been an unexpected relief at first. She’d dreaded facing Caleb’s inevitable distresses on top of Luc and Yeza’s, while having even less tools at her disposal to comfort or explain them, since she couldn’t communicate with him verbally. But instead he’d bounced back from his first breakdown with unbelievable ease.

Now though…The longer she looked at him, the less surprising—and more pitiful—his resilience seemed. As she watched the way dust turned into cakes of dirt in his hair, how he pulled both arms and legs back into the inside of his shirt when he went to sleep as if that position was mere common sense, how patient he was with the long hours of deprivation and boredom. The shadow of his old, starved oddities and habits was coming back, and Veth watched its growth with a heavy sense of dread. It wasn’t some miraculous strength she was witnessing out of nowhere, blooming like a tropical flower in unfriendly deserts. This was usage, familiarity, coming into mastery. She was watching Caleb navigate a known situation, untroubled by hunger pains or exposure, because he recognized them.

Whatever bleak, famished world he’d been wandering in before she and Yeza saved him must have been very like this one.

Veth tore her eyes away when she found them starting to burn, unable to look at Caleb any longer without something snapping inside her. Taking several slow breaths, she turned her closed eyes back towards the ceiling, as the safest place to fix them for now. She had to remember that grievance too. Her fallback plan wasn’t just for Luc’s sake…the vial in her hand was important for Caleb too. The human slumbering fitfully at her side, curled up in a fetal ball, was also her boy. Just as dear, and just as precious as the actual flesh and blood child on her other side.

This couldn’t go on any longer. For both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, another short one, but this and the previous chapter really only made sense to me as a duo section from both Caleb and Veth’s perspectives. I hope you liked it? :)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s references to heavy drinking, cannibalism, and canon typical violence in this chapter. Also some self-harm-ish stuff for the sake of escape—similar to dislocating a joint to get out of handcuffs—but if you’re squeamish about that, or chemical burns, maybe say “nah fam” and keep yourself safe? Also, it occurs to me that Veth’s internal monologue about the Goblins is kinda fantasy racist? But I mean, you can’t exactly blame her, under the circumstances. 
> 
> Enjoi

Veth’s plan was almost ruined by her being asleep when it went into action.

The screech of a rusty lock, and the distressed voices of other prisoners was all the warning she had before the critical moment was upon her. For a split second all was confusion as she jerked awake and looked about her, trying to make sense of too much at once. Then her eyes lighted on Yeza, wide eyed, holding Luc tight to his chest, and Caleb almost bearing his teeth he was so coiled with hostility. And she realized: the goblins had come.

Holding spears and makeshift weapons, with several coils of ropes and rusted chains, they came swaggering into the cell. The first one in grabbed a human child by the shirt, dragging him out of the cell and beginning to tie him up. All the prisoners rushed to get away from the door at that, those with families trying to marshal their loved ones together before those that were vulnerable might get separated, and one or two homeless drunks which had been hungover in peoples doorways when the goblins attacked shoved through all other hostages trying to claim the best spots for themselves. It was absolute chaos. Yeza, shielding Luc against his chest, was trying to shrink even further back against the wall where their family had been dozing until just then, hindered by the shoves of others trying to claim their place.

For a moment Veth was pushed away by the disorder, and her heart crawled up into her throat at the prospect of not reaching them in time. Then she ducked between a taller human’s legs, Caleb leaned into the fray to grab her sleeve, and he helped her pull herself to safety. When she reached them Veth’s heart leaped in triumph. Yes! There was still time.

Then she yanked Luc out of Yeza’s arms, whipped back around, and made a sprint for the door. Yeza squawked, then panicked, and she heard him scream “Veth!” just as she plunged into the crowd again. It was easier to go toward the danger than away from it, since nothing was stopping her but all the bodies moving in the opposite direction. A glance behind filled her with relief as she saw both Caleb and Yeza trying to catch up with her before the goblins did.

But now was the tricky part, and she couldn’t take enough time to make sure they understood what she was doing. She had to choose her goblin. Just barely she managed to split away from one with manacles by darting around a doddering old gnome between them. Then she was face to face with another snarling goblin holding a rope, and she skidded to a stop, letting him seize her.

“Veth—“ she heard Yeza scream again, this time cracking his voice over the word.

“Come on!” She shouted at him, begging him to understand, right as the goblins pounced on her.

Claws bit into her dress, she was unceremoniously jostled out of the cell, and then Luc was whipped out of her arms. It was all up to chance now. And chance didn’t fail her as the goblin began to throw loops of rope around her, and then around the inconsolable Luc, who was bawling his head off while she was tied. With a hasty clutch she managed to drag the clumsily bound Luc to safety, pressed against her leg, and with him safe she found the courage to check on the others.

It was alright. Everything was just as it should be. She could see Yeza still trying to muscle his way to her, but ensnared by several dirty green hands, and Caleb was just a mass of goblins on the ground, seething over him with ropes. He must have been putting up quite the fight, until a few moments before. It was all going according to her plan. She could hardly believe it.

For all their shouting and disorder, the goblins were quick about their work. Hardly had she gained enough of her footing to take a headcount of her family and realize they were all there, then the goblins were hustling them away again. After that it was all Veth could do to keep her hands on Luc, and make sure he wasn’t going to fall over on his fat baby’s legs and be trampled in all the confusion. She had to get both her hands on the back of his shirt and hold him off the ground while they were hustled along, which was no easy feat since her own wrists were tied.

But she managed it.

And then finally, for the first time in weeks, they were out in the open air, and she could catch a confused glimpse of stars in a moonlit sky as she was borne along. The very first thing she noticed was that the goblin’s camp was much larger, and much more populated, than she would have imagined. It was almost more of a shantytown, instead of the squalid village she’d been imagining, set against the side of a big hill into which a tunnel, and their prison, had been dug. Jumbled attempts at streets were lined with a variety of structures built anyhow, from fairly sturdy and weatherproof tents made of cured animal hides, to shelters made of sticks and dry branches that looked ready to collapse on themselves and their inhabitants at the first sign of a stray breeze. All types of goblins, male, female, wizened old bags of indeterminate gender, and ugly imitations of children, peeked at them from their homes or brushed past them in the streets.

The sight of everything made Veth swallow hard, trying to dislodge the stone in her throat. All of this looked like it would be much more difficult than she’d thought. It seemed like they were being hustled along toward a central square of sorts, where the buildings (if they could be called that), fell away and there was a large open area of hard packed earth. There seemed to be some kind of barbaric celebration going on. Goblins were crowding the area, illuminated by numerous torches that smoked noxiously; a whole crew of them were smashing open crates full of bottles, and big barrels of red wine, while the rest guzzled drinks out of cracked earthenware bowls, rags soaked in liquor, wooden buckets, and whatever other makeshift vessels came to hand.

But the central figurehead of the revelry was an enormous bonfire, casting lurid scarlet light over the entire square, with a huge black cauldron mounted over it.

As the guard paraded their selection of prisoners forward, a hunched old crone with bracelets made of tiny animal skulls on her wrists and bristling stubble on her wrinkled chin, left the creatures scuttling about the stock pot and came forward, screaming what sounded like goblinoid obscenities at the captors. Under her direction they were all corralled into one side of the square, and fenced in by a set of disgruntled guards who seemed none too happy about their exclusion from the festivities.

Just like everywhere else in the square, the ground under their feet was stained red. But there was no spilling gushes and sprinkles of wine on this side of the meeting place, and if Veth hadn’t worked out their intended fate already, the mysterious stains made by a different unseen wine would have clued her in. The giant cooking pot over the fire was easy enough to identify. She glanced down at the reddish dirt with distaste, dry as it was, and then glanced away, letting the reminder harden her resolve.

Not today.

“Veth—Veth—“ Yeza was trying to limp her way over to her, his usually mild and genial face a halo of worry.

“Don’t worry, Bumkin. I’ve got it all under control.” Veth dismissed him trying to make herself sound and feel as confident as she wished to appear. In reality she felt half sick and faint from the nerves twisting her stomach into a knot, while her heart was doing its level best to beat straight out of her chest onto the blood soaked earth at their feet.

“Honey!” Yeza squeaked in protest. “What are you doing? Why didn’t you—I think they’re going to cook us Veth! Why didn’t you stay in the back?!? I don’t—“

“Here.” Veth said, too occupied and distracted to think about allaying his fears and concerns. She thrust the ignored and mournfully wailing Luc into Yeza’s arms, forcing his stream of pleas and protests to cut short, while he soothed the baby. Meanwhile she began trying to stealthily dig in her pockets. The apparent simple task was surprisingly difficult with so many watching goblin eyes, and her own hampered wrists, but she managed to get her skirt twisted round so she could get her bound hands into the pocket she wanted.

“This is really bad Veth! Nobody ever comes back when they’re taken—“

Now the tricky part. It was absolutely imperative that she not waste a single unnecessary drop. It was a big bottle, but who knew when she’d need more of it? She couldn’t afford to spill any. Not to mention the risk of chemical burns if she didn’t take care. Loosing the use of her hands straight from the get-go would be fatal. Coaching herself with these, and many similar cautions, she wrapped her fingers around the cork, trying to draw it out without enough of the proper leverage to wrest her hands apart.

“—and look at the ground here! Don’t you think this is blood?!?! I mean I don’t have the proper toolbox to really find out but—“

Don’t spill it. Don’t spill it. Don’t spill it.

Veth’s hands were shaking—which didn’t help her efforts—as she carefully juggled the bottle between her pinioned hands, trying to tip the neck over so the acid would drip on the cords. Yeza was still babbling nervously, bouncing Luc up and down from the same overspilling nerves, but Veth had blocked him out in the intensity of her concentration. At first she tilted it, and got nothing, nothing, nothing...then a small gout of corrosive liquid poured out all at once and she smothered a string of curses. The acid hissed softly against the rope, the excess spill burning on her skin, making her long to itch it. The burn brought tears to her eyes, and her hands were shaking worse than ever, now made unsteady by the occurrence of one mishap already, when she’d hardly even started yet.

Then a pair of bony human hands reached into her vision, confiscating the acid before she could drop it as she nearly jumped out of her skin. Still tingling with the after effects of being so startled, Veth glanced up into the familiar blue eyes of what looked like a stranger. Caleb absolutely never, ever, looked right at her. But he locked eyes with her now like that loaded connection bore something urgent he wanted it to communicate, something calculated and determined behind his eyes that she didn’t know how to name. Chills burst out all over her, and she felt rooted in place for that one moment, like a beetle pinned on a card. Then he broke away, and he was carefully tipping the bottle over to dribble acid on her bonds.

How it was that Caleb understood her desperate intention perfectly when Yeza, her beloved other half, hadn’t comprehended her, Veth was at a loss to understand. But here she was. The proof was right before her eyes.

Who _was_ this boy?

The thought was come and gone too rapidly for answers. She was distracted by something else now. The ropes, soaked in acid, were starting to scorch her skin, careful as Caleb’s application had been. She bit back a sob, turning it into a watery hiss instead, hands shaking uncontrollably now from the mounting pain. But it was too soon to try and force the rope fibers apart, the acid was still working through them, and she had to endure the dragging seconds of waiting for the ropes to loose enough of their integrity. Caleb keened in sympathy, and when she glanced up at him, his eyes were full of anguish, as if he understood exactly what she was going through.

Veth gritted her teeth, forced a smile at his agonized expression, and ripped her hands apart. The rope fibers parted reluctantly, and for one heart stopping instant she was convinced they wouldn’t yield at all. Then some of the tinier threads snapped, which weakened a few larger ones, and that snowballed until she managed to rip the hemp cords in half. Shredding the burnt, blistered skin around her wrists with it. Veth cringed from the pain, desperate to silence herself, but unable to quite suppress a whimper as the friction—combined with the corrosive burns from the acid—tore off the top layer of skin around her wrists in two bloody rings.

A wave of dizziness washed over her, nausea turning her stomach as blood began to ooze down the backs of her hands. Caleb’s eyes had gone wide, concern written all over his face. But Veth did her best to steady herself, trying to repair the smile of reassurance that had faltered. She couldn’t lie with her words, she had to make him believe from her expression that she was ok.

He still didn’t look entirely mollified, but Veth had no time to soothe him further. Someone might notice her unbound hands at any second, and if that happened before the moment of Veth’s choosing, her only chance would be gone. She had to act now, or never. Holding her wrists together as if they were tied (the pretense would have been better if she’d loosely wrapped the broken rope around them, but the thought of letting even the softest texture make contact with her ruined skin sounded like torture at the moment), Veth limped toward the edge of the waiting prisoners. She was free, yes; but she still desperately needed weapons.

At the edge of the miserable huddle, she settled on a young, foolish looking goblin boy as her particular target. He was wearing an oversized breastplate that reached all the way to his knees, a wooden bucket which had some of the planks removed to make a clumsy helmet when upturned on his head, and most importantly he wasn’t paying attention. None of the motley guards were, but this one especially had grown careless. He was leaning back against the wall of the building behind him, his weapon (a short stick with a long jagged piece of shrapnel tied on the end of it) leaning beside him on the hand that wasn’t close to the prisoners, illuminated by a smoky torch as he drank out of an earthenware pot hung on a string at his belt. Perfect.

For a long moment Veth considered him, steeling her nerve as she waited for the right moment.

When he lifted the pot to guzzle a long drink, Veth seized her chance. She lunged forward before he could react, grabbed the helmet on his head, and twisted it round wrong-side-forward. The goblin squawked, flailing to recover himself, but Veth had already seized the makeshift pike on his other side, and wrenched the torch out of the wall. Snarling, the goblin ripped off his helmet, but Veth was still a step ahead. The last glimpse he had of her, she kicked at the pot of alcohol in his hand, sending a wave of stinking liquor over his baptized chest, and poked him in the sternum with the torch.

She’d meant to follow up the fire with a stab from the pike, if her trick didn’t work. But whatever booze the goblin had been drinking must have been extremely strong. The hapless creature went up in flames like a pudding, shrieking horribly as it flailed to douse the fire that had taken hold of its clothes. But Veth didn’t wait to find out if he would succeed in putting himself out.

At the first screech pandemonium broke loose, and the entire square was instantly thrown into chaos. The guards staggered back to attention, disordered but vicious, as they tried to contain the panic breaking out among the prisoners and discover the source of the upheaval. Veth darted between frightened prisoners, helped by the general terror sown by the attacking guards, which insured no one knew where anyone was. On the other side of the panicked crowd, Veth ran face first into a goblin that was darting in to join the fray. It snarled, she shrieked, and thrust the torch up into its face on instinct. The creature recoiled, and Veth regained her senses as it staggered back, just in time to strike it down with a slash across the face that slit one side of its throat and left a deep gouge in its jaw.

Before she could recover from the whirl of shock (half giddy, half horrified) at having killed something—even something so vile—a stout elderly human snatched the dagger fallen from the goblin’s hand. For a moment their eyes met, and Veth knew they were recognizing something in each other. Then he whirled to strike another goblin in the throat, tearing the sword from its hand, and passing the blade to his wife. Veth turned away just as the two humans were moving to cut each other free.

For herself, Veth was acting on instinct. Somehow, miraculously, her plan had worked. She was free, with a weapon in her hand, and there were even a few prisoners willing to fight with her. But the map of actions she’d drawn for herself had only extended so far, and now she had no choice but to react to the set of conditions afforded to her, good and bad. Their numbers were few, all the weapons available looked unreliable if not useless, and they were still in the middle of a small goblin city that outnumbered them more than ten to one. She couldn’t possibly think of going anywhere without Caleb and Yeza, but she had no idea where they were, so she couldn’t just take advantage of the din to help them escape. And she really couldn’t fight for long. She hardly knew what to do with the pike in her hand as it was. But there were three advantages.

Namely: whatever liquors the goblins were drinking had a high enough proof to be flammable. Veth had several sources of fire at her disposal. And she was an amateur chemist.

These good points occurred to her almost simultaneously with her acting on them. As soon as she saw the possibilities around her, Veth sprinted for the jugs of liquor and barrels of wine on the other side of the central bonfire. While the wine barrels wouldn’t help her, there was enough of the other swill that her prospects weren’t too bad, if she could only get her hands on it.

As it turned out, Veth got her chance before she even reached the barrels. Several of the goblins had left basins of abandoned alcohol by the bonfire, and she seized it at once. The only important question then was…where to set it alight? She only had a split second to make the decision, but then again. Veth was a chemist. Her two options seemed to be either: try to spread the alcohol over as much of a surface area as she could manage to release as many flammable vapors as she could, or throw it on the closest absorbent things she could find so they were hard to put out. Since there wasn’t much that looked burnable within reach, Veth threw the alcohol instead, creating a long stripe of wet dirt that ignited instantly, and formed a long barrier of scorching fumes across one side of the square.

Still acting on the same principles, Veth went to work as soon as she reached the barrels. With a wicked grin of triumph Veth realized that nearly all the buildings were made of wood or leather, both of which would burn well. Good. Let them try to put out the fires, once Veth the Explosions Expert had gotten her hands on them. She’d basically become a moving whirlwind, which cast out splashes of liquor in every direction, and soon both of the nearest buildings were beginning to burn healthily, and the goblins—which had been looking ready to try and attack her—were beginning to turn tail and flee from the rapidly spreading flames instead. Veth knew her work was done as soon as she saw two drinking bowls of alcohol which were siting a few feet away from her catch on fire on their own, lit by the burning vapors that were beginning to creep across the ground around the square. Then she knew with a thrill of satisfaction that her work was burning well, and would burn even better the hotter it got.

Perfect.

Now Veth just had to get her family out of danger, once and for all.

Veth emerged from the firestorm breathless, sweaty, torchless (after throwing the now dangerous source of open flames into the hottest of the burning buildings to get rid of it), and exhilarated. And there were Yeza and Caleb. Poor Yeza was clutching on to the flailing form of a shrieking Luc who was half out of his wits with all the excitement and fear, and Caleb had got hold of a goblin dagger somewhere, clutched in white knuckled hands and smeared with dark blood that must have come from at least one attacker that had threatened him.

“Veth!” Yeza half shouted, half sobbed, as soon as he saw her, looking as if he couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or not. “Oh gods, Veth—“

“Come on,” Veth interrupted, capturing him by the elbow as she dashed by. “No time for that!”

Hauling Yeza along at the swiftest pace she could manage, they ran toward the edge of the square. In all the chaos she couldn’t be sure now that Caleb was following them, but she trusted that he would. The edge of the goblin town wasn’t hard to find, visible in the distance between the buildings, and Veth dashed towards it with a last burst of desperate speed.

She couldn’t believe it! They were really about to escape, against all the impossible odds.

A dark, twisted goblin arrow thudded into the dirt mere inches from her foot, and she looked back to see a little, frothing goblin jabbering some unintelligible warning while pointing in their direction. Another arrow hissed by in the darkness, drawn from a completely different direction. The goblins were following them, more of them pointing after her, and she even looked straight into the eyes of one of them as she looked back and saw it aim at her.

They were going to follow her. Maybe out of vengeful anger over their burned buildings and slain companions. Maybe from nothing more than rage at loosing their intended meal. But she could read the hate and intent on their faces, alien and barbaric though they were.

Menaced by a shower of arrows, they ducked into the safety of the trees, finding a steep incline that sloped away before them. With a din of snapping branches and showering pebbles skittering out from their feet, Veth led her family in a controlled sliding sprint down the hill, carried by their momentum with such force that trying to stop or slow down would have only made them fall. Leaping around obstacles, and focused on nothing but trying to avoid running into something, Veth reached the bottom first. At the last second she realized their way was barred by a creek, and her last few steps were across slippery river stones, hopping among unsteady footholds as she pulled her careening dash up short.

There was a twinkle of deadly lights flashing through the trees at the top of the ridge. A splash distracted her, and she looked over to see Caleb—less dexterous than she’d managed to be—picking himself up, wet and miserable from the brook. Yeza came up last, and Veth had the presence of mind to arrest his momentum before it could bring both him and Luc down in the same way Caleb had tripped.

In that moment she looked at them both, Caleb dripping in water and mud, Yeza covered in scratches and staggering on his feet from the exertion of carrying Luc down the hill. And she knew they wouldn’t make it. Not all together. Not as she’d hoped they would. There was no way Yeza could sustain the pace much farther, and Caleb was too big, too visible, even though his legs were longer. There was only one choice then, wasn’t there?

They weren’t going to take her family again.

“Here,” Veth gasped, thrusting her pike into Caleb’s hands while shoving both him and Yeza downstream. “Split up. Go without me!”

“Veth—“ Yeza protested.

“We can’t outrun them!” Veth screeched, still trying to cajole them into movement.

“I’m not leaving you!” Yeza asserted right back, tears coming into his eyes.

“Yezzy. Yezzy. Listen.” Veth stammered, finally stopping and taking her husband by the elbows as Luc fussed between them. “They’re gonna hurt Luc, Yeza. Hurt Caleb. Our _boys_ , Yeza. That’s what’s important here.”

Yeza gaped at her, speechless, eyes wide with horror.

“That’s what’s important.” Veth rasped. “I can’t let them do that.”

“But…” Yeza whispered, mouth forming the words silently before he finally managed to say them. “What about you?”

“I’ll be fine!” Veth said with a cheerful, lurid grin, pouring everything she could muster into that one impossible lie. “I’m sneaky, ya know?”

“Ok.” Yeza croaked, tears still shining in his eyes, and she wasn’t sure if he believed her, or only wanted to. “Ok.”

“Now Lebby.” Veth grabbed Luc out of Yeza’s hands, and thrust him into Caleb’s arms, making him drop the pike she’d just given him. “You carry the baby. And run fast.”

Caleb was glancing back and forth between them, eyes huge, obviously terrified by whatever he sensed of their conversation, and he vented a frightened whine. She gave him a shove, but he planted his other foot, his face beginning to harden. Scowling at whatever he thought was happening, the human tried to shove Luc back into her arms.

“Caleb.” She pleaded, stepping back as he stepped forward.

Caleb locked eyes with her and snarled.

No compromising with him then. Veth broke eye contact, looking past her boy to find Yeza, faltering in the background. “Make him.” She said, voice cold and determined. Then she whipped around on her heel, and dashed away upstream. Behind her she heard the beginning of pursuit, cut off by sounds of struggle which must be Yeza dragging Caleb away. Then a last absolutely wordless howl of anguish and betrayal that made Veth blind with tears, unable to look back or she’d falter. Making as much noise and trampling as much as possible, Veth ran away, knowing it would break her boy’s heart.

She did it because she had to.

For his sake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really, REALLY, would have loved to include more of Caleb’s POV at the end there. But his thought process is already so chaotic that during an escape attempt, when I can’t afford to have anything less than absolute clarity about what’s going on and what everything _is_ , Caleb’s viewpoint would be far too confusing. I feel like I tried to reach a good balance with Veth perceiving his confusion and betrayal at the end, but it’s not quite the same.  
> Also, is the Character Death tag accurate, if it’s not happening “on screen?” Idk. If you’ve got an opinion tell me. And of course, I’d love to hear any other thoughts you guys had. Talking to y’all’s is so much fun ❤️


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t think there’s any content warnings that would concern anyone, but as always Caleb is an angsty and unhappy boy. He’s dealing with a lot of grief over Veth’s “death” and paranoia about what’s going to happen to their family because of it, so just be aware.

Caleb wiped his nose on the back of his hand, sniffling against the wet chill. His arm was as damp as his face, and his face was as damp as his hair, but the motion came automatically. The drops of gently falling-wet weren’t coming down on top of him, crouched under a patch of overhanging bushy-greens, but it still pattered all around him, infusing the air with a humid chill. It was big, and gray, and filled all his hearing in an overpowering way.

It was still preferable to being inside. Letting the water-sounds deafen his head was better than having to be where people were. Or weren’t. He’d rather be uncomfortable and alone, than dry and unhappy-angry. Even if his fingers were cold, and his nose was wet. He sniffed to clear his head, and wiped his arm across his nose and mouth again, no more productively than before.

“Caleb?”

Caleb jerked his head up at the voice, face scrunching in a scowl. Ugly-Edith. Not-Veth.Why couldn’t she leave him alone?!?

“Caleb?” The voice came again, lifted at a volume to carry across distances. “I made lunch sweetie, why don’t ya come inside and have some? Fried ham and cherry popovers. Sounds good right?”

Moving with great stealth Caleb began shuffling back on his knees, deeper into the greens and out through the back, where he padded off into the grass-greens and farther away from Home. Ugly-Edith’s voice was still there making calls to him, but he ignored her. She could shout at nothing for as long as she wanted. He didn’t care. Hunching his shoulders against the falling-wet, Caleb went off on his own, flitting between people-homes, until he lost himself and couldn’t hear Ugly-Edith anymore.

She was nosy and annoying, always acting like she was going to be his carer now, and trying to make Caleb do things, even though he didn’t want or need her. On the outside she would pretend to be friends, but Caleb knew she was just faking. She didn’t really like him. And he didn’t really like her. How could he, when she wouldn’t leave him alone, and was always there when he didn’t want her? Trying to come into his sleeping-room, watching him eat, and throwing his puzzle-things away. She’d rearranged the shiny-bottles that people came to trade round-brights for, making them wrong and different, even though the old way was specifically how Veth-Mother herself had liked Caleb to put them.

But it wasn’t just that. It was even worse. She was taking Little-Brother for herself. Caleb was capable, he could have cared for Little-Brother easily, but now Ugly-Edith was always in the way. Always picking Little-Brother up, or trying to make herself part of their games, holding Little-Brother to feed him, or trying to get Little-Brother to make talk-sounds with her because she knew Caleb couldn’t. She was always trying to leave Caleb out, and every time Caleb wanted to cry, until he could take out his frustrations on his sleep-cushions, alone at dark-time.

She was trying to replace him. He knew it. Maybe she’d turn Little-Brother against him, and then no one would love him anymore, and he would be all alone. Or perhaps she would draw Yeza-Bad in too. Maybe she wanted to take Veth-Mother’s place, and Yeza-Bad was going to love her, and she would be his new wife-mate. They would all forget about Veth-Mother, and abandon him, and he’d be turned away homeless-hungry again. They’d forget him.

With a choked noise Caleb stumbled into a run, distressed and overwhelmed with unhappy-thoughts. If only Yeza-Bad would just make her go away. But like all things, Yeza-Bad had grown cold and distant about this. He didn’t care that Ugly-Edith was ruining everything. He didn’t even notice. Yeza-Bad just spent all light-time in his work-cave doing mysterious things with his bottles. He didn’t lift a finger to stop Ugly-Edith’s poisoning, and did nothing. Just like he’d done nothing for Veth-Mother.

Caleb had seen the truth then, the badness under Yeza’s pretend-good. Now Caleb wouldn’t forgive him. Master never forgave Forgot for being bad either, so Caleb knew how to do it. He knew how Master would change into stone, how he could fill a space with ice just by entering it, and remembering Master’s skill turned into imitating it. Once he would have been ashamed to be anything like Master, but now he liked it. He was proud of it. Master’s-Memory was hard, and cold, and iron-unforgiving in Caleb’s head, and Caleb embraced his image.

When Yeza-Bad came close Caleb would make his face into stone, and turn away when the halfling tried to make-speak at him. Now Yeza-Bad wasn’t allowed to meet eyes with Caleb, and Caleb would put his face to the side if Yeza-Bad tried, avoiding any connection at all. So Yeza-Bad ignored Caleb, and Caleb ignored Yeza-Bad. And that was exactly how it should be.

He wouldn’t have minded so much if it was just Ugly-Edith trying to take Yeza-Bad away. They were both wicked, and as ugly as each other. They deserved to be alone. At least that was what he thought at first. _Then_ he wouldn’t have minded if Yeza-Bad forgot him. They didn’t like at each other now anyways. Yeza-Bad was already changed, cold and distant to Caleb, unconcerned with his pain. Now they didn’t even share space. Yeza never even looked at him. When Yeza-Bad came out of his hole at dark time, Caleb would immediately run away to his lie-down, curl up under the covers and force himself not to cry.

Yeza-Bad never tried to make him come back. Not even once…

Now Caleb _had_ to hate and resent Yeza-Bad, more angry-wretched the longer Yeza-Bad excluded him; or something else much deeper-painful would claw itself free from his chest to make him shatter in ugly pieces. That betrayal was growing poison teeth, bigger and more crushing with every interaction and reinforced silence. Unforgiveness was a wall between them, begun to protect them both, and too big to tear down now.

If Yeza-Bad’s abandonment hurt, Little-Brother’s was even worse. The rift growing between Caleb and Little-Brother made him screaming, desperate, tortured and dying inside. That was like being broken under Master’s knives all over again, and worse, because it was beloved Little-Brother that tormented him. Being betrayed by his loved-people always hurt the most. More than Master’s cruelty could ever wound him.

Master could only cut him. Beautiful-Evil had torn him apart.

They were all going away and leaving him. Yeza-Bad didn’t love him anymore, and wouldn’t even speak to him. Little-Brother was affectionate, but only while Caleb was right there. When Ugly-Edith called Little-Brother away, he would forget their games and happiness together, as if Caleb wasn’t important. The awful, ugly, horrible truth was that Veth-Mother was gone. And now their family, everything Caleb had thought he could care about and live for now, was falling apart…Just like he’d lost his old-family too…

The people Caleb loved always died or forgot him.

Caleb realized that he was crying, and that there was nowhere else to go, at the same time. The path he’d been following ended abruptly in front of him, boxed in by three big walls that left him facing a dead-end. He skidded to a stop, gasping for breaths from all the blind-running, and trembling with weariness. A crying-sound, half hiccup, half sob, bubbled out of his throat before he realized it was about to come, and he noticed how his eyes were stinging. The water on his face as he scrubbed at it with his arm was warm and salty, instead of like the falling-wet from the Overhead, and when he felt it another sobbing whimper came out of him. Why was he always weak like this? Even after all this time, he still didn’t know how to stop from crying.

Momentum gone, and all the careful walls around his thinks beginning to crumble, Caleb wilted in place, falling into a crouched huddle again. There were no greens protecting him from the falling-wet now, and the drops hammered over him ceaselessly. He was too unhappy to care. Hiding his face in his knees, Caleb gave up the self-struggle and wailed, letting the tears come out as much as they wanted.

It felt good to finally give up on being happy.

Caleb cried until his eyes hurt, and his head was aching with pressure. The tears in his eyes drained away eventually, all cried out and exhausted, as fatigue forced him to calm down. Even then he didn’t bother to stir, just shivering in place, as the falling-wet pounded around him in gray sheets. There didn’t seem to be any point in trying to move, and it took effort anyway. Forgot didn’t feel like making much of effort for anything.

A plaintive mewling sound, almost drowned out by the falling-wet, made him finally look around. He couldn’t tell how long he’d been sitting empty, since his broken-think couldn’t do that for him anymore, but he was wet to the skin and shivering-cold. It was a sound he knew, and hearing it kindled a tiny flicker of interest in his chest. Interest that Caleb, with his aching-thinks, and lonely-hollowness, was happy to encourage, receptive and eager for distractions.

He found the sound hidden behind a stack of wooden-boxes, on one side of the dead-end where he was. Pulling them aside, he saw one that had a missing board, and Caleb bent down to look inside, squinting through the heavy drips of falling-wet all around him. Then his insides leaped, fluttering with happy-warmth as he sucked in a gasping breath of elation.

Baby-frumpkins.

They were all curled up together in a furry ball on the inside of the box, so Caleb couldn’t tell how many there were. But he saw downy fur in lovely shapes and colors, little-tiny ears and tails, pink perfect-noses, and was instantly obsessed. They were perfect. Caleb quaked with happiness at the sight of them, instantly forgetting about how cold-and-alone he’d been just moments before seeing them. The frumpkins had his full attention at once, bending as close to the box as he could get, and gazing at them admiringly. For a moment he tried to touch them, but the little-animals squirmed when he did and mewled unhappily, so Caleb tucked his arms against his chest again, happy just to look at them. They didn’t like touches, Caleb would relate with that.

If there were babies, they had to have a mother, Caleb reasoned. Maybe if he stayed, she would come, and he could pet her instead. That would be nice. Nothing would have convinced him to go away, but Caleb settled himself in the wet more resolutely, additionally motivated to stay where he was and wait. He wanted to see the frumpkin-mother. Showered by falling-wet, cold, but rapturous-happy, Caleb waited.

The frumpkin-mother never came.

Caleb waited until the light was going away, and the Overhead above was turning dark, but she never appeared. The baby-frumpkins were still mewling, loud and unhappy, but nothing came to them. Inside his chest something heavy and clammy was growing, filling him with a vague dread the longer he waited, but he pushed it to the back of his thinks and ignored it. Maybe she wouldn’t come out because he was sitting too close to the babies. Seizing on this answer, Caleb crawled off to a distance, settling himself farther away in the wet. Surely that would be enough to bring her out. Especially if he stayed so still she wasn’t seeing or frightened of him. Caleb made himself very small and quiet in pursuit of that, determined to make the frumpkin-mother appear.

As the dark grew even bigger, still Caleb waited, and still no frumpkin-mother came.

Finally he shook himself to look around, realized all the light was nearly-gone, and falling-wet was still falling. He looked over at the box, listening to the plaintive animals inside, and knew…Their frumpkin-mother would not be coming. She would have come back by now, if she was coming at all. They had no mother really. Just like Caleb.

Stiff with chill and sitting in one spot so long, Caleb picked himself back up, creeping toward the box. He’d waited long enough. He was sure now. And if no frumpkin-mother was coming to take care of them, Caleb would collect them instead. They needed someone to care for them after all. Bending back down to look inside the box he made a hushing sound through his teeth, weighed down with sympathy for the abandoned baby-animals that were so like him. They were beginning to stumble around on unsteady paws, searching for the lost comfort of their carer. He knew how that felt.

At first he intended to pick up the box and carry the little-frumpkins inside it. That way he wouldn’t have to disturb them more than a little, and they would stay dry-warm in their shelter, where it was safe. But the box, when he tried to lift it with his weak-Caleb-arms, was too heavy. He could barely get one end out of the mud, and it would be too clumsy-large for him to manage its whole weight.

Setting the box back down, he crawled round to the hole again, and gingerly reached inside. With careful tenderness he scooped up the first warm ball of fur he could reach, drawing it out to lay inside his fabric-covering, which he’d pulled away from his stomach to become a makeshift carrier. All the things he was wearing were as wet as the rest of him, and the baby-frumpkins whimpered pitifully at being put in, dislodged from their warm-shelter and deposited somewhere much more unpleasant. His wet hands and body made their fur damp and bedraggled, looking smaller than they had before because they weren’t as fluffy.

Biting his lip in his extreme care, Caleb groped his way to his feet, trying not to jostle his charges. There was an exposed strip of skin along his stomach, while his body-covering bulged and twitched with the squirming animals inside, but Caleb paid no attention to the wind drawing out cold-bumps on his skin as it blew over him. Picking his way through the wet and dirt, Caleb crept back along the path he’d run over earlier, slowly feeling out a way back toward his shelter-place.

It took him long-times in the end. He hadn’t been paying attention to where he ran, going away from Ugly-Edith, and his broken-think couldn’t recall such complicated things anymore, so he had no idea how to get back the way he’d come. He’d been wandering-lost, peeking down random paths and taking unguided turns, until he stumbled into sight of Veth-and-Yeza’s-shelter by accident. Relieved to have found himself again, and eager to be out of the wet, Caleb splashed up to the enter-exit, kicking his way through it eagerly. The ring-maker over the enter-exit jingled as he came through it into the bottle-place, and at once Ugly-Edith appeared carrying a little-fire-holder, summoned by the sound.

“Caleb!” She gasped, almost dropping the little-fire in her fright. She looked frazzled and untidy, apparently very busy, the gray hairs coming out of the knot she tied them in. “Where on earth have you been?! It’s after dark! Poor Yeza’s been worried sick about you! And just look at the state of your clothes, by the Dawnfather’s Beard, what a mess—“

Words, words, words. She was making-sounds far too fast, and Caleb couldn’t comprehend a word of it, beyond the guilty impression that she was upset at him, and he was in trouble. Eyes round and frightened in the face of her noises, Caleb hunched his shoulders, shrinking back. Still making more talk, Ugly-Edith came forward, and he stumbled further back in his reluctance to be approached, in case she intended to punish him. But the old woman was too quick, cornering him in the entry-way, where she was still making speak at him as she began to touch his wet-covers.

“—you’re going to catch your death of cold at this rate. Just look at all this water on the floor. I declare you’re absolutely soaked! Out of those things this minute, and into something dry, before you freeze to death. I declare—“ her stream of sound cut short as she tried to yank the fabric over his head, and Caleb resisted her, staunchly keeping hold of the little-frumpkins cradled against his stomach. “What are—Where did you find those? Oh, they’re all wet, and you’re just covered in hair aren’t you? Here. Let me—”

She made a grab at Caleb’s treasures, and he cringed away with a terrified protest. But the evil-woman had already snatched two of the baby-frumpkins before Caleb could escape, and she took them away, dangling helpless from her hands. As she stole them from him, Caleb made a stumbling step in pursuit, almost yanked forward in his desperation to recover them. But he couldn’t fight back with his hands full of little-frumpkins, and he gave up on the mindless impulse as soon as he remembered himself. Instead he cringed back, as she set down her stolen prizes and made another lunge toward him, trying to take away more. Scrambling to escape, numb with shock and grief for the two he had to leave behind, Caleb fought back through the enter-exit where he’d come from, the same traitorous jingle accompanying his flight.

“Caleb! Yeza! No, come back! Yeza! Yeza!” Ugly-Edith’s speak-words screeched behind him.

Back under the wet, Caleb went into a flat sprint, desperate to save the animals he hadn’t lost. Ugly-Cruel-Evil-Edith still had the two he’d failed to save. What would she do with them? Would she throw them away? Maybe she’d kill them, if she didn’t want them. She’d hurt them, or throw them out, alone and hungry in the falling-wet and cold.

“Caleb!” A voice called behind him, and Caleb realized it was Yeza-Bad’s trying to stop or slow him.

Cold, changed, loveless Yeza, who had turned so bad and careless since Veth-Mother went away.

With a sob, Caleb ran faster. Yeza-Bad wouldn’t help him either. He would agree with Ugly-Edith, and take the little-frumpkins away.

“Tobin! Help me! Stop him, quick!”

Smoke-In-His-Mouth—one of the people who lived near them—stepped out from the shade of his shelter home, just as Caleb noticed him too late. Before he had time to dodge, a big hairy brown arm swung into his path, and he was grappled from the side. The man was much stronger than Caleb, and he was arrested in a stifling embrace, trapped even though he tried to squirm out.

“Here now, don’t you go nowhere, honey.” The man made speak. Caleb bucked against the iron-hold, ignoring his sounds, then tried to bite him, but couldn’t manage to sink teeth beneath the skin.

“Thank you Tobin.” Yeza-Bad sounded out of breath, as his footsteps splashed up.

“‘Course, my friend.”

“That’s all I needed. You can put him down now.”

Limp, and full of despair-feels, Caleb was surrendered to Yeza-Bad, who took hold of him by the front of his fabric-cover. But Caleb had given up on running away again. Smarter-peoples always caught him, doing that. He couldn’t really escape. Breathing wetly, and shivering from the cold, Caleb surrendered and sat still, clutching his squirming lapful of baby-animals as if that would keep them from being taken.

“Lebby?” Yeza-Bad sounded very gentle, and tried to lean in so he could get a good look at Caleb’s face.

Afraid of the eyes, Caleb turned his head away, shrinking away from the threatened gaze. With unexpected mercy, Yeza-Bad let him hide from it, and didn’t force him to make eye contact. Instead he sighed and released Caleb.

“Here.” Yeza-Bad put both his hands into Caleb’s line of seeing, and he looked down to what he was being given.

Yeza-Bad had brought both of the little-frumpkins, and was holding them out, unharmed.

A choked sob wrenched out of Caleb’s throat at the sight of them, and he found tears coming down his face again. They were safe. They were right there, and Yeza hadn’t hurt them. It was such a confusing relief that Caleb didn’t even know what to do with himself, just weeping stupidly over the balls of fur in Yeza’s hands.

With gentle, coaxing movements, Yeza prompted Caleb to open his bundle, and carefully placed the two lost frumpkins into it. Then suddenly Caleb found himself breaking again, as he crumbled forward into Yeza’s shoulder. He buried his face in the fabric there, gripped one hand in the front of Yeza’s body-covers and keened. Yeza-Bad went very stiff, and sat frozen-still, doing nothing to touch Caleb as he wept. Leaning on Yeza for support, all the lost-lonely-coldness, all the screaming-agony of loosing Veth-Mother, came back for Caleb again with the surge of a howling tempest. As now, at last, soothing and dreadfully, Nice-Yeza-Bad was finally there to hold him while he faced it.

_This was all I ever wanted Vatti._

Yeza cleared his throat awkwardly when Caleb leaned away, giving him a pale smile. “Come on, Lebby.” Still moving gently, he pinched the edge of Caleb’s covers again, guiding him to stand up. “Let’s get you home.”

Ugly-Edith was there when they got back, watching quietly as Yeza guided Caleb into the cooking-place, and coaxed him down onto a seat in front of the iron-fire-home. The old woman presented a woven-bowl lined with soft-fabrics when Caleb sat, and her wrinkled face didn’t seem evil now. She was smiling, and Caleb realized that her eyes had always been kind, though he hadn’t been able to see it. Moving with exaggerated care Yeza-Good began coaxing the baby-frumpkins from Caleb’s hands, making a performance of treating them gently as he placed them in the new fabric-nest.

When Yeza-Good carried the little-animals away Ugly-Edith came back with more soft-fabrics and dry body-coverings to wear. Caleb was too tired to resist putting them on, even if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t want to, the warmth, and kind faces making him realize how cold and unhappy he’d been. Being made much of and treated gently, given clean things to put on and a warm place to sit, felt like being plunged in a warm bath. All the fear, lonely-longing, and screaming-anger had left him feeling exhausted, and now they seemed enchanted away in a moment, banished like nightmare-pictures exposed to lights. Nice-Yeza wasn’t cold-distant anymore, Ugly-Edith was being kind to him, and he was safe-warm-sheltered again.

The mix of being very tired from running and hiding, along with being worn out by hurting-feels, and the change from being very cold to being very warm, had a powerful sleepy effect. Caleb felt like the cooking-place where he was, even Edith and Yeza, were melting together into a drowsy haze of pleasant-dreamings. Not quite awake, but not quite asleep enough to be unconscious of all the nice little details. Yeza-Good’s voice was floating around somewhere, its sound muting his fears, Ugly-Edith poked a drink into his hands, and it was warm, and sweet, soothing to his sore throat and aching think. Caleb surrendered himself to it all, enjoying the warmth too much to worry about anything, and let them coax him into his lie-down and to sleep.

***

“Postman brought the letters.”

“Yes thank you, Edith.”

They were all sitting together in the upstairs family room, and Yeza accepted the bundle of parchments Edith handed him before she vanished back downstairs the way she’d come. It was still raining outside, as it had all through the night, so the fire was burning brightly. Caleb had caught a cold, and was supposed to be on strict bed-rest, until Edith had yielded to the proposal of letting him venture as far as the couch on condition that he remain firmly wrapped up. Sitting on the rug between the man’s perch and the hearthstones Luc was frolicking with the kittens, which had been released from their basket, and were now stumbling about the floor. Though Caleb was always fixated on Luc’s small doings, the addition of the cats to his playtime seemed to have Caleb additionally enthralled, and he was watching every movement with intense, almost hawklike interest.

Pausing in his work at the nearby table, Yeza turned over the letters, sorting them into groups of important and unimportant communications. Suddenly he stopped sorting to stare in shock at one folded letter, much slimmer than the rest. It was written on good paper, the address written in a neatly elegant hand with very dark ink, and sealed with a thick gob of red wax. After staring at it for a long moment, he finally opened it carefully, as if afraid of ripping the paper or breaking the seal. Unnoticed by either Luc or Caleb, he read it. Then the contented stillness was broken by a whoop and clatter, as Yeza cheered and jumped from his seat, causing the chair to topple over.

“Promotion! Promotion!” Yeza danced across the room, causing the kittens to scatter from his feet as he held up the paper like a trophy and jigged. “Oh, this is very good for your poor, humble Papa, Luk-ey!”

Yeza snatched up his son and twirled in a circle on the rug, while Luc screamed with excitement, always ready to be tossed and swung about willy-nilly. Grinning, Caleb craned as far forward as he could to watch. Once he’d worked himself breathless, Yeza plunked Luc down, puffing for air as he corrected his glasses and pushed the hair back out of his eyes with a shaky hand.

“Listen to this, boys.” Yeza said. He wasn’t really speaking to anyone in particular, since Luc was too young, and Caleb too Caleb to comprehend what he was saying, but the halfling man puffed out his chest and read off the letter in grand style.

_Dear Sir._

_Greetings and Salutations, with hope this communication finds you well._  
_Your contributions to and achievements in the practice of alchemy, most especially as it relates to the unusual combinations of arcane theory and the physical sciences which you have made in the creation of potions, has highlighted you as an excellent candidate for official employ. We adjure you, with most warm entreaty, to consider lending us your aid in a professional capacity, of which we are most desirous. While we do not presume upon your agreeing to such employment here, this communication requests an interview conducted in person, at which time there will be a more concrete discussion of terms._

_With our complements, signed._

_Ludinus Da’leth._

Yeza’s face was a wreath of exhilaration as he finished reading with a flourish, throwing his arm into the air after pronouncing Ludinus’s name, which had been signed in a different hand at the end of the letter. “Well?” He demanded, apropos of nothing, dancing a little jig again on the rug. “And what do you think of that!” Luc giggled happily, infected by his father’s excitement though he didn’t understand it, and Caleb grinned as wordlessly as ever, while one of the kittens batted at a loose thread hanging on the cuff of Yeza’s trousers.

“Officially recognized for achievements in the practice of alchemy.” Yeza repeated in a happy daze, unaware of Luc trying to crawl beneath the couch and extract one of the kittens, or the persistent tugging at his trouser hem. He was surveying a much more abstract horizon, as he continued to mumble to himself. “A professional consultation for the Assembly…why you might as well say hired by the crown. After all, they work directly for the king! Incredible. I’ve been recognized! This could mean everything…Officially recognized for achievements in the practice of alchemy….”

Yeza sighed happily, Luc babbled at the kitten he’d pulled out, Caleb sneezed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy oh boy, did Caleb’s insecurities about being unnecessary and forgettable in other people’s lives and happiness hit some way too relatable cords for me. Friendship Jealousy fucking sucks, and I have to talk myself out of it all the fucking time. 
> 
> Also the reason the mother cat never came back to her kittens was because she’d been killed by some stray dogs. At least Caleb saved the kittens 🐱


End file.
